Interaction network

About: Interaction network is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2700 publications have been published within this topic receiving 113372 citations.

Time-ordered networks reveal limitations to information flow in ant colonies.

Abstract: Background: An important function of many complex networks is to inhibit or promote the transmission of disease, resources, or information between individuals. However, little is known about how the temporal dynamics of individuallevel interactions affect these networks and constrain their function. Ant colonies are a model comparative system for understanding general principles linking individual-level interactions to network-level functions because interactions among individuals enable integration of multiple sources of information to collectively make decisions, and allocate tasks and resources. Methodology/Findings: Here we show how the temporal and spatial dynamics of such individual interactions provide upper bounds to rates of colony-level information flow in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus. We develop a general framework for analyzing dynamic networks and a mathematical model that predicts how information flow scales with individual mobility and group size. Conclusions/Significance: Using thousands of time-stamped interactions between uniquely marked ants in four colonies of a range of sizes, we demonstrate that observed maximum rates of information flow are always slower than predicted, and are constrained by regulation of individual mobility and contact rate. By accounting for the ordering and timing of interactions, we can resolve important difficulties with network sampling frequency and duration, enabling a broader understanding of interaction network functioning across systems and scales.

A learning-based framework for miRNA-disease association identification using neural networks.

Abstract: Motivation A microRNA (miRNA) is a type of non-coding RNA, which plays important roles in many biological processes. Lots of studies have shown that miRNAs are implicated in human diseases, indicating that miRNAs might be potential biomarkers for various types of diseases. Therefore, it is important to reveal the relationships between miRNAs and diseases/phenotypes. Results We propose a novel learning-based framework, MDA-CNN, for miRNA-disease association identification. The model first captures interaction features between diseases and miRNAs based on a three-layer network including disease similarity network, miRNA similarity network and protein-protein interaction network. Then, it employs an auto-encoder to identify the essential feature combination for each pair of miRNA and disease automatically. Finally, taking the reduced feature representation as input, it uses a convolutional neural network to predict the final label. The evaluation results show that the proposed framework outperforms some state-of-the-art approaches in a large margin on both tasks of miRNA-disease association prediction and miRNA-phenotype association prediction. Availability and implementation The source code and data are available at https://github.com/Issingjessica/MDA-CNN. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The role of protein interaction networks in systems biomedicine.

Abstract: The challenging task of studying and modeling complex dynamics of biological systems in order to describe various human diseases has gathered great interest in recent years. Major biological processes are mediated through protein interactions, hence there is a need to understand the chaotic network that forms these processes in pursuance of understanding human diseases. The applications of protein interaction networks to disease datasets allow the identification of genes and proteins associated with diseases, the study of network properties, identification of subnetworks, and network-based disease gene classification. Although various protein interaction network analysis strategies have been employed, grand challenges are still existing. Global understanding of protein interaction networks via integration of high-throughput functional genomics data from different levels will allow researchers to examine the disease pathways and identify strategies to control them. As a result, it seems likely that more personalized, more accurate and more rapid disease gene diagnostic techniques will be devised in the future, as well as novel strategies that are more personalized. This mini-review summarizes the current practice of protein interaction networks in medical research as well as challenges to be overcome.

When the Web meets the cell

Abstract: Motivation: Enormous and constantly increasing quantity of biological information is represented in metabolic and in protein interaction network databases. Most of these data are freely accessible through large public depositories. The robust analysis of these resources needs novel technologies, being developed today. Results: Here we demonstrate a technique, originating from the PageRank computation for the World Wide Web, for analyzing large interaction networks. The method is fast, scalable and robust, and its capabilities are demonstrated on metabolic network data of the tuberculosis bacterium and the proteomics analysis of the blood of melanoma patients. Availability: The Perl script for computing the personalized PageRank in protein networks is available for non-profit research applications (together with sample input files) at the address: http://uratim.com/pp.zip Contact:grolmusz@cs.elte.hu. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

A Human Protein Interaction Network Shows Conservation of Aging Processes between Human and Invertebrate Species

Abstract: We have mapped a protein interaction network of human homologs of proteins that modify longevity in invertebrate species. This network is derived from a proteome-scale human protein interaction Core Network generated through unbiased high-throughput yeast two-hybrid searches. The longevity network is composed of 175 human homologs of proteins known to confer increased longevity through loss of function in yeast, nematode, or fly, and 2,163 additional human proteins that interact with these homologs. Overall, the network consists of 3,271 binary interactions among 2,338 unique proteins. A comparison of the average node degree of the human longevity homologs with random sets of proteins in the Core Network indicates that human homologs of longevity proteins are highly connected hubs with a mean node degree of 18.8 partners. Shortest path length analysis shows that proteins in this network are significantly more connected than would be expected by chance. To examine the relationship of this network to human aging phenotypes, we compared the genes encoding longevity network proteins to genes known to be changed transcriptionally during aging in human muscle. In the case of both the longevity protein homologs and their interactors, we observed enrichments for differentially expressed genes in the network. To determine whether homologs of human longevity interacting proteins can modulate life span in invertebrates, homologs of 18 human FRAP1 interacting proteins showing significant changes in human aging muscle were tested for effects on nematode life span using RNAi. Of 18 genes tested, 33% extended life span when knocked-down in Caenorhabditis elegans. These observations indicate that a broad class of longevity genes identified in invertebrate models of aging have relevance to human aging. They also indicate that the longevity protein interaction network presented here is enriched for novel conserved longevity proteins.