Parameter estimation for a mathematical model of the cell cycle in frog eggs

Parameter values for a kinetic model of the nuclear replication-division cycle in frog eggs are estimated by fitting solutions of the kinetic equations (nonlinear ordinary differential equations) to a suite of experimental observations. A set of optimal parameter values is found by minimizing an objective function defined as the orthogonal distance between the data and the model. The differential equations are solved by LSODAR and the objective function is minimized by ODRPACK. The optimal parameter values are close to the guesstimates of the modelers who first studied this problem. These tools are sufficiently general to attack more complicated problems, where guesstimation is impractical or unreliable.