Simulating tubulin-associated unit transport in an axon: using bootstrapping for estimating confidence intervals of best-fit parameter values obtained from indirect experimental data

In this paper, we first develop a model of axonal transport of tubulin-associated unit (tau) protein. We determine the minimum number of parameters necessary to reproduce published experimental results, reducing the number of parameters from 18 in the full model to eight in the simplified model. We then address the following questions: Is it possible to estimate parameter values for this model using the very limited amount of published experimental data? Furthermore, is it possible to estimate confidence intervals for the determined parameters? The idea that is explored in this paper is based on using bootstrapping. Model parameters were estimated by minimizing the objective function that simulates the discrepancy between the model predictions and experimental data. Residuals were then identified by calculating the differences between the experimental data and model predictions. New, surrogate ‘experimental’ data were generated by randomly resampling residuals. By finding sets of best-fit parameters for a large number of surrogate data the histograms for the model parameters were produced. These histograms were then used to estimate confidence intervals for the model parameters, by using the percentile bootstrap. Once the model was calibrated, we applied it to analysing some features of tau transport that are not accessible to current experimental techniques.