[Theory] 3/7 Talks at TTIC: Peter Koo, Harvard University

[Mary Marre]

When:     Thursday, March 7th at *11:00 am*

Where:    TTIC, 6045 S Kenwood Avenue, 5th Floor, Room 526

Who:       Peter Koo, Harvard University


*Title: *      Interpretable Deep Learning for Biological Sequence Analysis
*Abstract:* Deep learning methods have the potential to make a significant
impact in biology and healthcare, but a major challenge is understanding
the reasons behind their predictions. In this talk, I will demonstrate how
interpreting these “black box” models can: 1) provide novel biological
insights and 2) help navigate better model design for big, noisy biological
sequence data. In the first part of the talk, I will present results from
interrogating a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained to infer
sequence and RNA structure specificities of RNA-binding proteins. We find
that in addition to sequence motifs, our CNN learns a model that considers
the number of motifs, their spacing, and both positive and negative effects
of RNA structure context. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss
ongoing research which demonstrates how deep learning can help design
better models for protein contact predictions. Specifically, we interpret a
variational autoencoder (VAE) that is trained on aligned, homologous
protein sequences. We find that our VAEs capture phylogenetic relationships
with an approximate Bayesian mixture model of profiles, *i.e.* site-independent
amino-acid probability models, a result that serves as a good null model
for contact predictions. By using our model as a new background correction
method, we show that mutual information provides significantly improved
contact predictions while remaining more scalable than alternative methods.

Host: Jinbo Xu <j3xu at ttic.edu>

Mary C. Marre
Administrative Assistant
*Toyota Technological Institute*
*6045 S. Kenwood Avenue*
*Room 517*
*Chicago, IL  60637*
*p:(773) 834-1757*
*f: (773) 357-6970*
*mmarre at ttic.edu <mmarre at ttic.edu>*
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