GLOBAL IDENTIFIABILITY OF LINEAR COMPARTMENTAL-MODELS - A COMPUTER ALGEBRA ALGORITHM

A priori global identifiability deals with the uniqueness of the solut ion for the unknown parameters of a model and is, thus, a prerequisite for parameter estimation of biological dynamic models. Global identif iability is however difficult to test, since it requires sol ting a sy stem of algebraic nonlinear equations which increases both in nonlinea rity degree and number of terms and unknowns with increasing model ord er, In this paper, a computer algebra tool, GLOBI (GLOBal Identifiabil ity) is presented, which combines the topological transfer function me thod with the Buchberger algorithm, to test global identifiability of linear compartmental models. GLOBI allows for the automatic testing of a priori global identifiability of general structure compartmental mo dels from general multi input-multi output experiments. Examples of us age of GLOBI to analyze a priori global identifiability of some comple x biological compartmental models are provided.