Methods and apparatus for characterizing polymeric mixtures

A method of characterizing a polymeric mixture, the method comprising the steps of:

• (a) generating a solution space comprising a plurality of candidate solutions, wherein each candidate solution is characterized by a quantity of components, and wherein each component is characterized by
• (i) an abundance of the component in the candidate solution,
• (ii) a composition defined by one or more members of a set of primary units, and
• (iii) an arrangement of the one or more primary units in the component;
• (b) providing an experimental measurement of a first attribute of a polymeric mixture of interest;
• (c) determining for each of at least a subset of the candidate solutions a value of the first attribute;
• and
• (d) characterizing the polymeric mixture at least in part by eliminating at least one of the candidate solutions from the solution space whose determined value does not correspond to the experimental measurement of the first attribute.

A method of characterizing a biological preparation comprising a plurality of biopolymers, the method comprising the steps of:

• (a) generating a solution space comprising a plurality of candidate solutions, wherein each candidate solution is characterized by a quantity of components, and wherein each component is characterized by
• (i) an abundance of the component in the candidate solution,
• (ii) a composition defined by one or more members of a set of primary units, and
• (iii) an arrangement of the one or more primary units in the component;
• and
• (b) characterizing a biological preparation at least in part by eliminating candidate solutions from the solution space in a step-wise manner according to a comparison between an experimental measurement of each of a plurality of attributes of the biological preparation and a value of the respective attribute determined for each of at least a subset of the remaining candidate solutions in the solution space.

A method for determining a measure of difference between at least two mixtures, the method comprising the steps of:

• (a) describing each of at least two mixtures having known components, wherein each component of each mixture is characterized by
• (i) an abundance of the component in the candidate mixture,
• (ii) a composition defined by one or more members of a set of primary units, and
• (iii) an arrangement of the one or more primary units in the component;
• (b) ordering the components of each of the at least two mixtures to identify analogous components;
• (c) evaluating a first distance metric that accounts for a difference between the quantity of components of the at least two mixtures and a difference between the abundance of analogous components of the at least two mixtures;
• (d) evaluating a second distance metric that accounts for a difference between the composition of analogous components of the at least two mixtures;
• (e) evaluating a third distance metric that accounts for a difference between the arrangement of the primary units of the analogous components;
• and
• (f) determining a measure of difference using the first distance metric, the second distance metric, and the third distance metric.

A system for characterizing a polymeric mixture, the system comprising:

• (a) a candidate generation module that generates a solution space comprising a plurality of candidate solutions;
• (b) a computation module that determines for each of at least a subset of the candidate solutions a value of a first attribute;
• (c) a comparison module that determines for each of the candidate solutions in (b) whether the value of the first attribute for the candidate matches an experimentally-measured value of the first attribute for a polymeric mixture of interest;
• and
• (d) an elimination module that eliminates at least one of the candidate solutions from the solution space whose first attribute value does not match the experimentally-measured value.

An apparatus for characterizing a polymeric mixture, the apparatus comprising:

• (a) a memory for storing code that defines a set of instructions;
• and
• (b) a processor adapted to execute the set of instructions to:
• (i) generate a solution space comprising a plurality of candidate solutions;
• (ii) determine for each of at least a subset of the candidate solutions a value of a first attribute;
• (iii) determine for each of the candidate solutions in (ii) whether the value of the first attribute for the candidate matches an experimentally-measured value of the first attribute for a polymeric mixture of interest;
• and
• (iv) eliminate at least one of the candidate solutions from the solution space whose first attribute value does not match the experimentally-measured value.