Walkthrough tutorial

This tutorial demonstrates the use of EMMAA through a scientifically interesting example related to COVID-19, involving the drug sitagliptin.

In each section, the Background block provides a description of some part of the EMMAA dashboard and explains the key concepts behind it. The Action block tells you what specifically to do at each step. Finally, the Science block provides insights and observations gained along the way about our scientific use case of interest.

Each section also contains a short (less than one minute) video that you can watch to guide your exploration.

Note: This tutorial uses webm videos. Not all versions of Safari support webm. We recommend using Chrome or Firefox to play the videos in this tutorial.

Note: The tabs on each model page on the dashboard have been renamed as of Dec 7, 2021 as follows: - Model -> Model overview - Tests -> Model analysis/testing - Papers -> Publications - Curation -> Model curation - Belief -> Statement confidence - Agents -> Agent search The videos below currently use the old tab names.

1. Visit the EMMAA Dashboard

Background: The EMMAA dashboard is at https://emmaa.indra.bio. The landing page shows all of the self-updating models available in EMMAA including the COVID-19 model (top right). The landing page also links to Help and Demo videos, and documentation on the EMMAA REST API for programmatic access.

Action: Open your browser and go to emmaa.indra.bio. Then find the Covid-19 model and click on the Details button to explore the model.

 

2. (Optional) Register and log in

Background: The EMMAA dashboard is publicly accessible, however, for certain features, namely, statement curation, and query registration (more details later), registering a user account and logging in is necessary.

Action (Optional): Click the blue Login button on the top right and the Register tab to register first, then enter your details on the Login tab to log in.

 

3. Explore the COVID-19 Model page

Background: Having clicked on the Details button for the COVID-19 model, we arrive on its model exploration page. Here we can see when the model was last updated, and see a summary of its current status. We can look at the statements with the most support

Action: Scroll through the page and examine each section, hover over the various plots to see more details. For instance, hover over the plot in the “Number of Statements over Time” section to see how many statements were in the model on a given date. Below, take a look at the list of newly added statements, typically updated each day. In the “Most Supported Statements” section, find the statement “Sitagliptin inhibits DPP4” and click on it.

Science: It is intriguing that one of the statements with the most evidence supporting it in the context of the COVID-19 EMMAA model is about sitagliptin, an anti-diabetic medication. Going forward, in this tutorial, we will explore it as a possible therapeutic.

 

4. Examine and curate statement evidences

Background: When you click on a statement such as “Sitagliptin inhibits DPP4”, a new page opens up where the underlying evidence supporting the statement can be examined.

  • In the header, both relevant entities, “Sitagliptin” and “DPP4” are linked to outside databases (ChEBI and HGNC, respectively) where more information about them is available. Next, the green badge with the pencil means that there are two user curations for this statement indicating that it is correct, i.e., that some of the evidence sentences correctly imply the statement. The orange badge on the right shows the belief score of the statement, in this case 1, meaning that EMMAA’s measure of confidence for this statement being correct is high. The gray badge showing 10/318 indicates that there are a total of 318 evidences supporting this statement with 10 visible, (all the evidences can be loaded by clicking “Load more” below). Finally, the purple JSON badge allows downloading the statement and its evidences in a machine-readable form for downstream processing.

  • In each evidence row below the header, a pencil allows curating the statement either as correct or incorrect (if incorrect, choose the error type that best matches the issue). Next to it, the source of the evidence is shown, for instance sparser or reach, two examples of text mining systems integrated with EMMAA. In the middle, the evidence sentence is shown with the entities of interest highlighted in the text (note that in the header, the names are standardized to e.g., standard gene symbols, whereas in scientific text, as seen in the evidence, authors often use synonyms). On the right, a link out to the source publication is given, typically to PubMed (the numbers represent PubMed identifiers).

Action: Browse the evidences for the “Sitagliptin inhibits DPP4” statement. (Optional) If you registered and logged in, try clicking one of the pencils next to an evidence row, and add a curation. Try scrolling to the bottom and clicking “Load more” to load further evidences, and click on one of the PubMed ID links on the right to see one of the source publications.

Science: Based on the evidence available here, we find that sitagliptin is discussed in a large number of publications as a drug that inhibits the DPP4 protein. The evidence sentences and source publications indicate relevance not only in treating diabetes but also as an anti-inflammatory drug. It could therefore be specifically relevant for COVID-19 treatment.

 

5. Browse all statements in the model

Background: EMMAA allows browsing, sorting and filtering all the statements in the model according to a few different criteria. The default sort order is by evidence count (see gray badge on the right in each header). See Section 4 for a detailed description of each statement header (and when clicked to expand) each evidence row underneath. In some of the statement headers, you see a blue badge with a flag and a number. The number here represents the number of explanatory paths that this statement is part of when the EMMAA COVID-19 model is used to automatically explain a set of drug effects on a set of viruses. Statements that have a high path count are specifically important since they play a role in analysis results. The “Sorting by evidence” dropdown allows sorting statements by paths (i.e., the number in the blue badges) or belief (i.e., the number in the orange badges). The “Filter by statement type” drowpdown also allows looking at only certain types of statements such as Activation or Phosphorylation.

Action: On the EMMAA COVID-19 model page, next to the “Most Supported Statements” header, click on the “View All Statements” button. Scroll down the page to see example statements and click on any that you find interesting to examine its evidence. Then click on the “Sorting by evidence” dropdown and select “Sorting by paths”, and click “Load Statements”. This gives you a list of statements based on how often they appear on paths explaining drug effects on viruses.

 

6. Examine drug-virus effect explanations

Background: The EMMAA COVID-19 model can be used to explain experimental observations. This automated analysis feature is crucial to EMMAA and demonstrates that EMMAA can turn raw knowledge extracted from scientific text into actionable models. The COVID-19 model is compiled into a signed (e.g., statement types like activation or inhibition imply positive and negative signs, respectively) and unsigned (i.e., statement types are ignored) graph, and semantically constrained automated path finding is performed to reconstruct mechanistic paths that connect a perturbation to a readout. Given data sets of perturbations and readouts, EMMAA performs this analysis daily, with each model update - and each new piece of knowledge modeled - the results potentially changing.

This aspect of EMMAA is also called “testing” (hence the “Tests” tab) since the results of these explanations, i.e, how many observations the model can explain are also indicative of the scope and quality of the model. On the Tests tab, one can select a corpus of observations. For the EMMAA COVID-19 model, we have two such test corpora available, the “Covid19 curated tests” represent positive hits in cell-based assays for drugs inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 or another coronavirus, curated by our team from publications. The “Covid19 mitre tests” corpus is integrated from the MITRE Therapeutics Information Portal and represents drugs that are known to or studied to affect SARS-CoV-2 or other coronaviruses. The test page shows plots of how many tests “passed” (i.e., explanations were successfully found) over time as the model evolved. It also allows looking at the specific explanations found for each test under the “All Test Results” section by clicking on the green checkmark next to a test.

Action: On the EMMAA COVID-19 model page, click on the “Tests” tab. Then under Test Corpus Selection, select “Covid19 mitre tests” and click “Load Test Resutlts”. Now hover over the two plots showing the percentage of tests passed and passed and applied tests to see how the model’s explanations evolved over time. Then scroll down to the “All Test Results” section and see the list of drug-virus effects for which there are automatically constructed explanations.

 

7. Drill-down into explanation results

Background: To learn more and see if an explanation makes sense you can click on the statements underlying the explanation and curate any incorrect statements.

Action: Scroll down to find (or use your browser’s search) to find the test row in which “Sitagliptin inhibits SARS-CoV-2” in the “All Test Results” section. Then click on the green checkmark in the first (signed graph) column. This brings you to a page where you can see the specific explanation EMMAA found. Currently (note that explantions can change over time as the model evolves) the explanation shown here indicates the ACE protein as an intermediate on sitagliptin’s effect on SARS-CoV-2. Click on the statement “Sitagliptin activates ACE” on the right to see its evidence.

Science: Interestingly, ACE appears to be an intermediate mediating sitagliptin’s effect on SARS-CoV-2. Examining the evidence for sitagliptin’s effect on ACE - while the polarity of this extraction happens to be incorrect - it still draws our attention to an important observation, namely that both sitagliptin, and another DPP4 inhibitor, linagliptin are both able to inhibit ACE, a protein not directly responsible for (like ACE2), but involved in SARS-CoV-2 infection.

 

8. Browse the model from the perspective of papers

Background: The third tab after “Model” and “Tests” we explore here is the “Papers” tab which allows exploring the COVID-19 model from the perspective of individual publications. The Number of Papers over Time plot shows how many papers were processed to build the model over time, and the number of papers over time that provided at least one causal statement included in the model. Below, the Papers with the Largest Number of Statements contributed to the model are available. However, more interesting is the New Papers section below which, every day, shows the new COVID-19 publications that were automatically collected and processed to update the model. Clicking on the paper title brings up a page with the statements extracted from that paper (if any). The second Link column links out to the original publication.

Action: Click on the “Papers” tab and hover over the plot of Papers over Time to see how the number of papers integrated into the model changed recently. Then scroll down and look at the list of new publications in the last update. Click on one of the paper titles with at least one Assembled Statement to browse the extracted statements.

Science: If you are interested in a given disease area such as COVID-19, looking at the New Papers section after each update for the relevant EMMAA model can be useful to monitor progress in the given area.

 

9. Query the model to find source-target paths

Background: EMMAA allows interactive querying of models on the Queries page.

Action: At the top of the website toward the left, click on the “Queries” link to go to the Queries page. From the four tabs on top, select the “Source-target paths” and read the description to learn about how this query type works. Then under Model selection, select “Covid-19”, and under Query selection, select Inhibition as the statement type, enter “sitagliptin” as source and “SARS-CoV-2” as target. Then click “Submit” to run the query and wait until it resolves (note that this can take minutes).

Action (optional): If you have registered and are logged in, you may also select the “Subscribe to query” checkbox. If this is selected, you will get an email from EMMAA, any time a model update resulted in a meaningful change in the results of this query, e.g., a newly discovered path between sitagliptin and SARS-CoV-2 in our example.

Action Once the query resolves, check the Query Results tab and see that the COVID-19 EMMAA model found paths between the source and target both with the signed graph and unsigned graph approaches. Click on the green checkmark under Signed Graph to see the paths.

Science: The paths that the COVID-19 model found for explaining how sitagliptin can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 are revealing, namely, they highlight inflammation, ACE, and DPP4 as important intermediates. Drilling down further into DPP4’s reported effect on SARS-CoV-2, we learn that DPP4 inhibition may antagonize SARS-CoV-2 due to a multitude of possible mechanisms.

 

Action: Click on the “DPP4 activates SARS-CoV-2” statement in the fourth path section on the right (note that results can change over time as the model is updated). Then click on the “Figures” tab next to the “Statements” tab. Then look at some of the figures which are referenced from publications discussing DPP4 in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection. You can also click on “View paper” to see the source publication.

 

10. Query the model to find upstream regulator paths

Background: The Up/down-stream paths query tab allows setting up “open ended” queries where only a source or a target is specified. This is specifically useful for instance to learn about upstream regulatory paths modulating a given target.

Action: Back on the Queries page, click on the Up/down-stream paths tab and read the description to understand how this query type works. Then under Query specification, select the “Covid-19” model, select the “Inhibition” statement type, enter “DPP4” as the agent, select “object (upstream search)” in the dropdown, and then select “small molecules” in the Limit entity types box. This sets up a search for “what small molecules inhibit DPP4?”. Once the query resolves (note that this can take minutes), click on the green checkmark under Signed Graph to examine paths. Browse the paths to learn about possible modulators of DPP4 as an intermediate relevant for SARS-CoV-2 infection/COVID-19. Click on any statements of interest to browse their evidence and link out to the underlying publication.

Action (optional): Similar to Section 9 you may again click the “Subscribe to query” checkbox to get email notifications if there are meaningful new results to your query as the model is updated over time.

Science: There are several noteworthy results here, for instance, in addition to sitagliptin, linagliptin shows up - another anti-diabetic drug. Drilling down into the supporting evidence, we find that it is also a DPP4 inhibitor and can therefore be relevant as a SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 therapeutic.

 

11. Chat with a machine assistant about the COVID-19 model

Background: EMMAA also offers natural language human-machine dialogue via the CLARE system - also developed by our group - with any of the EMMAA models. This allows asking questions in simple English language such as “what is DPP4?”, “what does it activate?”. Note that crucially, natural language dialogue supports sequential exploration through co-references i.e., in this case the “it” in “what does it activate?”, or for instance “any of those” in the question “are any of those small molecules?”. Note that when chatting with a given EMMAA model, the system answers most questions that are based on the content of the model. So you might get different answers to the same question in the context of e.g., the COVID-19 model and the Neurofibromatosis model.

Actions: Back on the main emmaa.indra.bio landing page, find the Covid-19 model and click on the Chat button. Enter an email address and leave “covid19” (pre-filled) in the EMMAA model field. Then click on Start Chat.

  • First say “hi” to see CLARE respond.

  • You can also ask “what can you do?” to see a list of capabilities with some example sentences.

  • Ask “what is DPP4?” to learn about DPP4 and get links out to databases describing it.

  • Ask “what does it activate” to see what its downstream effects are (ranked by evidence) in the context of the COVID-19 EMMAA model. You can also click on the View statements link to browse the underlying statements and evidences.

  • You can now ask, “what inhibits DPP4?” to see a list of things that inhibit it.

  • Then follow up with “are any of those small molecules?” to filter that list to just small molecules. See how “sitagliptin” and “linagliptin” both show up along with a number of other potentially relevant drugs.

Science: Using natural language dialogue, we could quickly establish that DPP4 has an important role in inflammatory response in the context of COVID-19, and that there are many approved inhibitors of DPP4 available (typically used to treat diabetes) that could be relevant for further studies and experiments.

 

12. Follow the COVID-19 EMMAA model on Twitter

Background: The COVID-19 EMMAA model has its own Twitter account where it tweets about its progress: the new papers it processes and new statements it adds to the model, as well as any new drug-virus effect explanations it constructs as a result of model updates. Tweets also link to specific pages on the EMMAA dashboard where you can examine the results. You can follow the Twitter account to get these updates.

Action (optional): On the emmaa.indra.bio landing page, find the Covid-19 model and click on the Twitter icon (blue bird) to link to the Twitter page. Then click Follow to follow the model’s tweets.