Julia Brettschneider:  Non parametric methods for point pattern analysis of protein abundances
Channel: NorthWestBiomathsDataScienceSeminars
Date: 2021-12-17

North West Seminar Series of Mathematical Biology and Data Science 

Wednesday, 1st December 2021 (hosted by Ivo Siekmann) 

https://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk/APMSeminar/

Abstract:
We have developed statistics and a testing procedure free of distributional assumptions to quantify the significance of calculated differences between point pattern structures as observed, for example, in fluorescent microscopic images of protein abundance. Sensitivity is investigated in a simulation study of unmarked and marked point patterns. We illustrate our methods in experimental data shedding light on the interplay between subcellular structures called microtubules and chemicals involved in mitosis.

We further look at the temporal evolution of such spatial abundance distribution. We suggest a methodology that both estimates local bulk movement patterns and compares two such patterns in a test of dependence. Application to both simulated and real data sets from microscopy indicate that our methodology may be effectively applied to the problem of colocalisation, which is of interest for understanding the interaction between different biomolecular species or point patterns in other examples.