Parameter estimation method for improper fractional models and its application to molecular biological systems

Derived from biochemical principles, molecular biological systems can be described by a group of differential equations. Generally these differential equations contain fractional functions plus polynomials (which we call improper fractional model) as reaction rates. As a result, molecular biological systems are nonlinear in both parameters and states. It is well known that it is challenging to estimate parameters nonlinear in a model. However, in fractional functions both the denominator and numerator are linear in the parameters while polynomials are also linear in parameters. Based on this observation, we develop an iterative linear least squares method for estimating parameters in biological systems modeled by improper fractional functions. The basic idea is to transfer optimizing a nonlinear least squares objective function into iteratively solving a sequence of linear least squares problems. The developed method is applied to the estimation of parameters in a metabolism system. The simulation results show the superior performance of the proposed method for estimating parameters in such molecular biological systems.