Parameter Estimation of Kinetic Rates in Stochastic Reaction Networks by the EM Method

Gillespie´s algorithm serves to simulate a network of stochastic reactions with given initial quantities and kinetic rate constants. In this paper we consider the estimation of the kinetic rate constants of the reactions based on a set of discrete observations generated by Gillespie´s algorithm. In particular, we present an Expectation Maximisation (EM) method to perform maximum likelihood estimation of the rate constants. Applicability of the method is tested on a simple reaction network.