Michael F. Crowley | Searcharxiv

arXiv2019

Message-passing neural networks for high-throughput polymer screening

Machine learning methods have shown promise in predicting molecular properties, and given sufficient training data machine learning approaches can enable rapid high-throughput virtual screening of large libraries of compounds. Graph-based neural network architectures have emerged in recent years as the most successful approach for predictions based on molecular structure, and have consistently achieved the best performance on benchmark quantum chemical datasets. However, these models have typically required optimized 3D structural information for the molecule to achieve the highest accuracy. These 3D geometries are costly to compute for high levels of theory, limiting the applicability and practicality of machine learning methods in high-throughput screening applications. In this study, we present a new database of candidate molecules for organic photovoltaic applications, comprising approximately 91,000 unique chemical structures.Compared to existing datasets, this dataset contains substantially larger molecules (up to 200 atoms) as well as extrapolated properties for long polymer chains. We show that message-passing neural networks trained with and without 3D structural information for these molecules achieve similar accuracy, comparable to state-of-the-art methods on existing benchmark datasets. These results therefore emphasize that for larger molecules with practical applications, near-optimal prediction results can be obtained without using optimized 3D geometry as an input. We further show that learned molecular representations can be leveraged to reduce the training data required to transfer predictions to a new DFT functional.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2016

Efficient estimation of the maximum metabolic productivity of batch systems

Production of chemicals from engineered organisms in a batch culture involves an inherent trade-off between productivity, yield, and titer. Existing strategies for strain design typically focus on designing mutations that achieve the highest yield possible while maintaining growth viability. While these methods are computationally tractable, an optimum productivity could be achieved by a dynamic strategy in which the intracellular division of resources is permitted to change with time. New methods for the design and implementation of dynamic microbial processes, both computational and experimental, have therefore been explored to maximize productivity. However, solving for the optimal metabolic behavior under the assumption that all fluxes in the cell are free to vary is a challenging numerical task. This work presents an efficient method for the calculation of a maximum theoretical productivity of a batch culture system using a dynamic optimization framework. This metric is analogous to the maximum theoretical yield, a measure that is well established in the metabolic engineering literature and whose use helps guide strain and pathway selection. The proposed method follows traditional assumptions of dynamic flux balance analysis: (1) that internal metabolite fluxes are governed by a pseudo-steady state, and (2) that external metabolite fluxes are dynamically bounded. The optimization is achieved via collocation on finite elements, and accounts explicitly for an arbitrary number of flux changes. The method can be further extended to explicitly solve for the trade-off curve between maximum productivity and yield. We demonstrate the method on succinate production in two common microbial hosts, Escherichia coli and Actinobacillus succinogenes, revealing that nearly optimal yields and productivities can be achieved with only two discrete flux stages.

q-bio.QM↗