Identification and validation of quasispecies models for biological systems

An identification procedure for biological systems cast as quasispecies models is proposed. Their identification is a challenging problem because of the bilinear dependence on the parameters and their physical constraints. The proposed solution is within the framework of set membership identification. We determine an estimate of the model parameters together with their interval of variability (Uncertainty Intervals), taking into account all the physical constraints. Invalidation/validation is performed on the basis of the predictive capability of the estimated models. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure has been illustrated by means of simulation experiments.