Polynomial Models of time series over
(Z/p)n
Micah Leamer
In recent years mathematical modeling has become an integral part of
understanding biological systems. It is the hope that particularly
elusive branches of biology can be brought into better understanding
through new mathematical techniques. The methods in this paper were
inspired by a need to understand gene regulatory networks. The
methods are relevant to data that has been collected for the
interactions of proteins and DNA over time. Generally a gene
regulatory network will have thousands of components. Usually,
however, only a few observations can be made as to the state that
these various components are in over time. The states of these n
components at each time step are represented as points in
Rn. We
then discretize these points and represent them as points in
(Z/q)n,
where q is a prime.
This paper shows a method for finding particular
functions that map each point to the next point for all points.
Further more we offer the constraint that one may choose what
components affect various other components at the next time step and
offer a way to find simple functions of this type. Also we show how
any particular function that maps one point to the point at the next
time step can be used to determine all such functions from
(Z/q)n to
(Z/q)n.
The paper then explains an attached computer program, which
determines the simplest such function with the ability to constrain
what components each of the components at the next time step are
dependent upon.
(Advisor Ed Green)