Huber, H. A.; Finley, S. D.

Computational models in systems biology are often underdetermined - that is, there is little data relative to the complexity and size of the model. The lack of data is primarily due to limits in our ability to observe specific biological systems and restricts the utility of computational models. However, there are a growing number of experimental databases in biology. While these databases provide more observations, they often do not have observations that match the system of interest exactly. Here, we investigate what information can be gleaned from these general databases in the context of modeling a specific system - cell signaling. Ultimately, our goal is to better determine models of specific systems, thereby increasing their utility. We use this framework to integrate measurements from the protein data bank (PDB) and UniProt (FASTA) and to quantify what information is gained from these measurements when modeling cell signaling. We choose to investigate the utility of these databases in the context of dynamic cell signaling models because experimental measurements of the variables of interest (protein dynamics) are still quite limited. We find that we can successfully integrate measurements from these databases to improve parameter estimation of the cell signaling models. The impact of the database-derived measurements on model predictions depends on the complex relationship between model prediction and parameter values. Nonetheless, this study demonstrates that measurements from databases have the potential to be generalized to better inform parameters in models of cell signaling.