2021
1.
Tam, Jason; Lorsbach, Tim; Schmidt, Sebastian; Wicker, Jörg
Holistic Evaluation of Biodegradation Pathway Prediction: Assessing Multi-Step Reactions and Intermediate Products Journal Article
In: Journal of Cheminformatics, 13 (1), pp. 63, 2021.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Altmetric | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways
@article{tam2021holisticb,
title = {Holistic Evaluation of Biodegradation Pathway Prediction: Assessing Multi-Step Reactions and Intermediate Products},
author = {Jason Tam and Tim Lorsbach and Sebastian Schmidt and J\"{o}rg Wicker},
url = {https://jcheminf.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13321-021-00543-x},
doi = {10.1186/s13321-021-00543-x},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-09-03},
urldate = {2021-08-23},
journal = {Journal of Cheminformatics},
volume = {13},
number = {1},
pages = {63},
abstract = {The prediction of metabolism and biotransformation pathways of xenobiotics is a highly desired tool in environmental sciences, drug discovery, and (eco)toxicology. Several systems predict single transformation steps or complete pathways as series of parallel and subsequent steps. Their performance is commonly evaluated on the level of a single transformation step. Such an approach cannot account for some specific challenges that are caused by specific properties of biotransformation experiments. That is, missing transformation products in the reference data that occur only in low concentrations, e.g. transient intermediates or higher-generation metabolites. Furthermore, some rule-based prediction systems evaluate the performance only based on the defined set of transformation rules. Therefore, the performance of these models cannot be directly compared. In this paper, we introduce a new evaluation framework that extends the evaluation of biotransformation prediction from single transformations to whole pathways, taking into account multiple generations of metabolites. We introduce a procedure to address transient intermediates and propose a weighted scoring system that acknowledges the uncertainty of higher-generation metabolites. We implemented this framework in enviPath and demonstrate its strict performance metrics on predictions of in vitro biotransformation and degradation of xenobiotics in soil. Our approach is model-agnostic and can be transferred to other prediction systems. It is also capable of revealing knowledge gaps in terms of incompletely defined sets of transformation rules.},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The prediction of metabolism and biotransformation pathways of xenobiotics is a highly desired tool in environmental sciences, drug discovery, and (eco)toxicology. Several systems predict single transformation steps or complete pathways as series of parallel and subsequent steps. Their performance is commonly evaluated on the level of a single transformation step. Such an approach cannot account for some specific challenges that are caused by specific properties of biotransformation experiments. That is, missing transformation products in the reference data that occur only in low concentrations, e.g. transient intermediates or higher-generation metabolites. Furthermore, some rule-based prediction systems evaluate the performance only based on the defined set of transformation rules. Therefore, the performance of these models cannot be directly compared. In this paper, we introduce a new evaluation framework that extends the evaluation of biotransformation prediction from single transformations to whole pathways, taking into account multiple generations of metabolites. We introduce a procedure to address transient intermediates and propose a weighted scoring system that acknowledges the uncertainty of higher-generation metabolites. We implemented this framework in enviPath and demonstrate its strict performance metrics on predictions of in vitro biotransformation and degradation of xenobiotics in soil. Our approach is model-agnostic and can be transferred to other prediction systems. It is also capable of revealing knowledge gaps in terms of incompletely defined sets of transformation rules.
2.
Tam, Jason; Lorsbach, Tim; Schmidt, Sebastian; Wicker, Jörg
Holistic Evaluation of Biodegradation Pathway Prediction: Assessing Multi-Step Reactions and Intermediate Products Journal Article
In: ChemRxiv, 2021, (preprint, accepted for publication at the Journal of Cheminformatics).
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Altmetric | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways
@article{tam2021holistic,
title = {Holistic Evaluation of Biodegradation Pathway Prediction: Assessing Multi-Step Reactions and Intermediate Products},
author = {Jason Tam and Tim Lorsbach and Sebastian Schmidt and J\"{o}rg Wicker},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Holistic_Evaluation_of_Biodegradation_Pathway_Prediction_Assessing_Multi-Step_Reactions_and_Intermediate_Products/14315963},
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.14315963},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-03-27},
urldate = {2021-03-27},
journal = {ChemRxiv},
abstract = {The prediction of metabolism and biotransformation pathways of xenobiotics is a highly desired tool in environmental and life sciences. There are several systems that currently predict single transformation steps or complete pathways as series of parallel and subsequent steps. Their accuracy is often evaluated on the level of a single transformation step. Such an approach cannot account for some specific challenges that are related to the nature of the biotransformation experiments. This is particularly true for missing transformation products in the reference data that occur only in low concentrations, e.g. transient intermediates or higher-generation metabolites. Furthermore, some rule-based prediction systems evaluate accuracy only based on the defined set of transformation rules. Therefore, the performance of different models cannot be directly compared.In this paper, we introduce a new evaluation framework that extends the evaluation of biotransformation prediction to holistically evaluating predicted pathways, taking into account multiple generations of metabolites. We introduce a procedure to address transient intermediates and propose a weighted scoring system that acknowledges the uncertainty of higher-generation metabolites. We implemented this framework in enviPath and demonstrate its strict performance metrics on predictions of in vitro biotransformation and degradation of xenobiotics in soil.Our approach is model-agnostic and can be transferred to other prediction systems. It is also capable of revealing knowledge gaps in terms of incompletely defined sets of transformation rules.},
note = {preprint, accepted for publication at the Journal of Cheminformatics},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The prediction of metabolism and biotransformation pathways of xenobiotics is a highly desired tool in environmental and life sciences. There are several systems that currently predict single transformation steps or complete pathways as series of parallel and subsequent steps. Their accuracy is often evaluated on the level of a single transformation step. Such an approach cannot account for some specific challenges that are related to the nature of the biotransformation experiments. This is particularly true for missing transformation products in the reference data that occur only in low concentrations, e.g. transient intermediates or higher-generation metabolites. Furthermore, some rule-based prediction systems evaluate accuracy only based on the defined set of transformation rules. Therefore, the performance of different models cannot be directly compared.In this paper, we introduce a new evaluation framework that extends the evaluation of biotransformation prediction to holistically evaluating predicted pathways, taking into account multiple generations of metabolites. We introduce a procedure to address transient intermediates and propose a weighted scoring system that acknowledges the uncertainty of higher-generation metabolites. We implemented this framework in enviPath and demonstrate its strict performance metrics on predictions of in vitro biotransformation and degradation of xenobiotics in soil.Our approach is model-agnostic and can be transferred to other prediction systems. It is also capable of revealing knowledge gaps in terms of incompletely defined sets of transformation rules.
3.
Stepišnik, Tomaž; Škrlj, Blaž; Wicker, Jörg; Kocev, Dragi
A comprehensive comparison of molecular feature representations for use in predictive modeling Journal Article
In: Computers in Biology and Medicine, 130 , pp. 104197, 2021, ISSN: 0010-4825.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Altmetric | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways, molecular feature representation, toxicity
@article{stepisnik2021comprehensive,
title = {A comprehensive comparison of molecular feature representations for use in predictive modeling},
author = {Toma\v{z} Stepi\v{s}nik and Bla\v{z} \v{S}krlj and J\"{o}rg Wicker and Dragi Kocev},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001048252030528X},
doi = {10.1016/j.compbiomed.2020.104197},
issn = {0010-4825},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-03-01},
journal = {Computers in Biology and Medicine},
volume = {130},
pages = {104197},
abstract = {Machine learning methods are commonly used for predicting molecular properties to accelerate material and drug design. An important part of this process is deciding how to represent the molecules. Typically, machine learning methods expect examples represented by vectors of values, and many methods for calculating molecular feature representations have been proposed. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive comparison of different molecular features, including traditional methods such as fingerprints and molecular descriptors, and recently proposed learnable representations based on neural networks. Feature representations are evaluated on 11 benchmark datasets, used for predicting properties and measures such as mutagenicity, melting points, activity, solubility, and IC50. Our experiments show that several molecular features work similarly well over all benchmark datasets. The ones that stand out most are Spectrophores, which give significantly worse performance than other features on most datasets. Molecular descriptors from the PaDEL library seem very well suited for predicting physical properties of molecules. Despite their simplicity, MACCS fingerprints performed very well overall. The results show that learnable representations achieve competitive performance compared to expert based representations. However, task-specific representations (graph convolutions and Weave methods) rarely offer any benefits, even though they are computationally more demanding. Lastly, combining different molecular feature representations typically does not give a noticeable improvement in performance compared to individual feature representations.},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways, molecular feature representation, toxicity},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Machine learning methods are commonly used for predicting molecular properties to accelerate material and drug design. An important part of this process is deciding how to represent the molecules. Typically, machine learning methods expect examples represented by vectors of values, and many methods for calculating molecular feature representations have been proposed. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive comparison of different molecular features, including traditional methods such as fingerprints and molecular descriptors, and recently proposed learnable representations based on neural networks. Feature representations are evaluated on 11 benchmark datasets, used for predicting properties and measures such as mutagenicity, melting points, activity, solubility, and IC50. Our experiments show that several molecular features work similarly well over all benchmark datasets. The ones that stand out most are Spectrophores, which give significantly worse performance than other features on most datasets. Molecular descriptors from the PaDEL library seem very well suited for predicting physical properties of molecules. Despite their simplicity, MACCS fingerprints performed very well overall. The results show that learnable representations achieve competitive performance compared to expert based representations. However, task-specific representations (graph convolutions and Weave methods) rarely offer any benefits, even though they are computationally more demanding. Lastly, combining different molecular feature representations typically does not give a noticeable improvement in performance compared to individual feature representations.
2016
4.
Wicker, Jörg; Fenner, Kathrin; Kramer, Stefan
A Hybrid Machine Learning and Knowledge Based Approach to Limit Combinatorial Explosion in Biodegradation Prediction Incollection
In: Lässig, Jörg; Kersting, Kristian; Morik, Katharina (Ed.): Computational Sustainability, pp. 75-97, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016, ISBN: 978-3-319-31858-5.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Altmetric | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways, multi-label classification
@incollection{wicker2016ahybrid,
title = {A Hybrid Machine Learning and Knowledge Based Approach to Limit Combinatorial Explosion in Biodegradation Prediction},
author = {J\"{o}rg Wicker and Kathrin Fenner and Stefan Kramer},
editor = {J\"{o}rg L\"{a}ssig and Kristian Kersting and Katharina Morik},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31858-5_5},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-31858-5_5},
isbn = {978-3-319-31858-5},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-04-21},
booktitle = {Computational Sustainability},
pages = {75-97},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
address = {Cham},
abstract = {One of the main tasks in chemical industry regarding the sustainability of a product is the prediction of its environmental fate, i.e., its degradation products and pathways. Current methods for the prediction of biodegradation products and pathways of organic environmental pollutants either do not take into account domain knowledge or do not provide probability estimates. In this chapter, we propose a hybrid knowledge-based and machine learning-based approach to overcome these limitations in the context of the University of Minnesota Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS). The proposed solution performs relative reasoning in a machine learning framework, and obtains one probability estimate for each biotransformation rule of the system. Since the application of a rule then depends on a threshold for the probability estimate, the trade-off between recall (sensitivity) and precision (selectivity) can be addressed and leveraged in practice. Results from leave-one-out cross-validation show that a recall and precision of approximately 0.8 can be achieved for a subset of 13 transformation rules. The set of used rules is further extended using multi-label classification, where dependencies among the transformation rules are exploited to improve the predictions. While the results regarding recall and precision vary, the area under the ROC curve can be improved using multi-label classification. Therefore, it is possible to optimize precision without compromising recall. Recently, we integrated the presented approach into enviPath, a complete redesign and re-implementation of UM-PPS.},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways, multi-label classification},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
One of the main tasks in chemical industry regarding the sustainability of a product is the prediction of its environmental fate, i.e., its degradation products and pathways. Current methods for the prediction of biodegradation products and pathways of organic environmental pollutants either do not take into account domain knowledge or do not provide probability estimates. In this chapter, we propose a hybrid knowledge-based and machine learning-based approach to overcome these limitations in the context of the University of Minnesota Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS). The proposed solution performs relative reasoning in a machine learning framework, and obtains one probability estimate for each biotransformation rule of the system. Since the application of a rule then depends on a threshold for the probability estimate, the trade-off between recall (sensitivity) and precision (selectivity) can be addressed and leveraged in practice. Results from leave-one-out cross-validation show that a recall and precision of approximately 0.8 can be achieved for a subset of 13 transformation rules. The set of used rules is further extended using multi-label classification, where dependencies among the transformation rules are exploited to improve the predictions. While the results regarding recall and precision vary, the area under the ROC curve can be improved using multi-label classification. Therefore, it is possible to optimize precision without compromising recall. Recently, we integrated the presented approach into enviPath, a complete redesign and re-implementation of UM-PPS.
5.
Wicker, Jörg; Lorsbach, Tim; Gütlein, Martin; Schmid, Emanuel; Latino, Diogo; Kramer, Stefan; Fenner, Kathrin
enviPath - The Environmental Contaminant Biotransformation Pathway Resource Journal Article
In: Nucleic Acid Research, 44 (D1), pp. D502-D508, 2016.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Altmetric | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, linked data, machine learning, metabolic pathways, multi-label classification
@article{wicker2016envipath,
title = {enviPath - The Environmental Contaminant Biotransformation Pathway Resource},
author = {J\"{o}rg Wicker and Tim Lorsbach and Martin G\"{u}tlein and Emanuel Schmid and Diogo Latino and Stefan Kramer and Kathrin Fenner},
editor = {Michael Galperin},
url = {http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/44/D1/D502.abstract},
doi = {10.1093/nar/gkv1229},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
journal = {Nucleic Acid Research},
volume = {44},
number = {D1},
pages = {D502-D508},
abstract = {The University of Minnesota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database and Pathway Prediction System (UM-BBD/PPS) has been a unique resource covering microbial biotransformation pathways of primarily xenobiotic chemicals for over 15 years. This paper introduces the successor system, enviPath (The Environmental Contaminant Biotransformation Pathway Resource), which is a complete redesign and reimplementation of UM-BBD/PPS. enviPath uses the database from the UM-BBD/PPS as a basis, extends the use of this database, and allows users to include their own data to support multiple use cases. Relative reasoning is supported for the refinement of predictions and to allow its extensions in terms of previously published, but not implemented machine learning models. User access is simplified by providing a REST API that simplifies the inclusion of enviPath into existing workflows. An RDF database is used to enable simple integration with other databases. enviPath is publicly available at https://envipath.org with free and open access to its core data.},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, data mining, enviPath, linked data, machine learning, metabolic pathways, multi-label classification},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The University of Minnesota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database and Pathway Prediction System (UM-BBD/PPS) has been a unique resource covering microbial biotransformation pathways of primarily xenobiotic chemicals for over 15 years. This paper introduces the successor system, enviPath (The Environmental Contaminant Biotransformation Pathway Resource), which is a complete redesign and reimplementation of UM-BBD/PPS. enviPath uses the database from the UM-BBD/PPS as a basis, extends the use of this database, and allows users to include their own data to support multiple use cases. Relative reasoning is supported for the refinement of predictions and to allow its extensions in terms of previously published, but not implemented machine learning models. User access is simplified by providing a REST API that simplifies the inclusion of enviPath into existing workflows. An RDF database is used to enable simple integration with other databases. enviPath is publicly available at https://envipath.org with free and open access to its core data.
2010
6.
Wicker, Jörg; Fenner, Kathrin; Ellis, Lynda; Wackett, Larry; Kramer, Stefan
Predicting biodegradation products and pathways: a hybrid knowledge- and machine learning-based approach Journal Article
In: Bioinformatics, 26 (6), pp. 814-821, 2010.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Altmetric | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways
@article{wicker2010predicting,
title = {Predicting biodegradation products and pathways: a hybrid knowledge- and machine learning-based approach},
author = {J\"{o}rg Wicker and Kathrin Fenner and Lynda Ellis and Larry Wackett and Stefan Kramer},
url = {http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/6/814.full},
doi = {10.1093/bioinformatics/btq024},
year = {2010},
date = {2010-01-01},
journal = {Bioinformatics},
volume = {26},
number = {6},
pages = {814-821},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
abstract = {Motivation: Current methods for the prediction of biodegradation products and pathways of organic environmental pollutants either do not take into account domain knowledge or do not provide probability estimates. In this article, we propose a hybrid knowledge- and machine learning-based approach to overcome these limitations in the context of the University of Minnesota Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS). The proposed solution performs relative reasoning in a machine learning framework, and obtains one probability estimate for each biotransformation rule of the system. As the application of a rule then depends on a threshold for the probability estimate, the trade-off between recall (sensitivity) and precision (selectivity) can be addressed and leveraged in practice.Results: Results from leave-one-out cross-validation show that a recall and precision of ∼0.8 can be achieved for a subset of 13 transformation rules. Therefore, it is possible to optimize precision without compromising recall. We are currently integrating the results into an experimental version of the UM-PPS server.Availability: The program is freely available on the web at http://wwwkramer.in.tum.de/research/applications/biodegradation/data.Contact: kramer@in.tum.de},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Motivation: Current methods for the prediction of biodegradation products and pathways of organic environmental pollutants either do not take into account domain knowledge or do not provide probability estimates. In this article, we propose a hybrid knowledge- and machine learning-based approach to overcome these limitations in the context of the University of Minnesota Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS). The proposed solution performs relative reasoning in a machine learning framework, and obtains one probability estimate for each biotransformation rule of the system. As the application of a rule then depends on a threshold for the probability estimate, the trade-off between recall (sensitivity) and precision (selectivity) can be addressed and leveraged in practice.Results: Results from leave-one-out cross-validation show that a recall and precision of ∼0.8 can be achieved for a subset of 13 transformation rules. Therefore, it is possible to optimize precision without compromising recall. We are currently integrating the results into an experimental version of the UM-PPS server.Availability: The program is freely available on the web at http://wwwkramer.in.tum.de/research/applications/biodegradation/data.Contact: kramer@in.tum.de
2008
7.
Wicker, Jörg; Fenner, Kathrin; Ellis, Lynda; Wackett, Larry; Kramer, Stefan
Machine Learning and Data Mining Approaches to Biodegradation Pathway Prediction Inproceedings
In: Bridewell, Will; Calders, Toon; de Medeiros, Ana Karla; Kramer, Stefan; Pechenizkiy, Mykola; Todorovski, Ljupco (Ed.): Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on the Induction of Process Models at ECML PKDD 2008, 2008.
Links | BibTeX | Tags: biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways
@inproceedings{wicker2008machine,
title = {Machine Learning and Data Mining Approaches to Biodegradation Pathway Prediction},
author = {J\"{o}rg Wicker and Kathrin Fenner and Lynda Ellis and Larry Wackett and Stefan Kramer},
editor = {Will Bridewell and Toon Calders and Ana Karla de Medeiros and Stefan Kramer and Mykola Pechenizkiy and Ljupco Todorovski},
url = {http://www.ecmlpkdd2008.org/files/pdf/workshops/ipm/9.pdf},
year = {2008},
date = {2008-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on the Induction of Process Models at ECML PKDD 2008},
keywords = {biodegradation, cheminformatics, computational sustainability, enviPath, machine learning, metabolic pathways},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}