Optimization-based inference for temporally evolving networks with applications in biology

The problem of identifying dynamics of biological networks is of critical importance in order to understand biological systems. In this article, we propose a data-driven inference scheme to identify temporally evolving network representations of genetic networks. In the formulation of the optimization problem, we use an adjacency map as a priori information and define a cost function that both drives the connectivity of the graph to match biological data as well as generates a sparse and robust network at corresponding time intervals. Through simulation studies of simple examples, it is shown that this optimization scheme can help capture the topological change of a biological signaling pathway, and furthermore, might help to understand the structure and dynamics of biological genetic networks.