Predict metabolomic profiles of microbial communities through neural ODE (Ordinary Differential Equation)
NetSI Speaker Series
Tong Wang
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Past Talk
Friday
Mar 11, 2022
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3:30 pm
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177 Huntington Ave.
11th floor
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Characterizing metabolic activities in microbial communities is crucial for understanding the functions of microbes and their impact on the host or environment. Computational methods that are capable of predicting metabolomic profiles from microbial compositions save considerable efforts needed for metabolomic profiling experimentally. Numerous computational methods have been developed to solve this problem. Yet we still lack a method with high prediction power and general applicability. Here we develop a new method, mNODE (Metabolomic profile prediction using Neural Ordinary Differential Equations), leveraging a new family of deep neural network models. We show compelling evidence that mNODE outperforms existing methods. Moreover, it can naturally incorporate dietary information to further enhance the prediction of metabolomic profiles. The presented results demonstrate that mNODE is a powerful tool to investigate the microbiome-diet-metabolome relationship, facilitating future research on precision nutrition.

About the speaker
About the speaker
Dr. Tong Wang is a postdoctoral research fellow at Yang-Yu Liu’s lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021, with his thesis focusing on modeling microbial communities with cross-feeding and predator-prey interactions. The primary goal of his current research combines ecological models and omics data to reveal the assembly rules of microbial communities, especially the human gut microbiomes. Besides the mathematical modeling, he has also worked on predicting metabolomic profiles from microbial compositions and dietary information using ecology-based models and machine learning models.
Dr. Tong Wang is a postdoctoral research fellow at Yang-Yu Liu’s lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021, with his thesis focusing on modeling microbial communities with cross-feeding and predator-prey interactions. The primary goal of his current research combines ecological models and omics data to reveal the assembly rules of microbial communities, especially the human gut microbiomes. Besides the mathematical modeling, he has also worked on predicting metabolomic profiles from microbial compositions and dietary information using ecology-based models and machine learning models.