Search results for "biological network"
showing 10 items of 32 documents
Discriminating graph pattern mining from gene expression data
2016
We consider the problem of mining gene expression data in order to single out interesting features that characterize healthy/unhealthy samples of an input dataset. We present and approach based on a network model of the input gene expression data, where there is a labelled graph for each sample. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to build a different graph for each sample and, then, to have a database of graphs for representing a sample set. Out main goal is that of singling out interesting differences between healthy and unhealthy samples, through the extraction of "discriminating patterns" among graphs belonging to the two different sample sets. Differently from the …
Topological ranks reveal functional knowledge encoded in biological networks: a comparative analysis
2022
Abstract Motivation Biological networks topology yields important insights into biological function, occurrence of diseases and drug design. In the last few years, different types of topological measures have been introduced and applied to infer the biological relevance of network components/interactions, according to their position within the network structure. Although comparisons of such measures have been previously proposed, to what extent the topology per se may lead to the extraction of novel biological knowledge has never been critically examined nor formalized in the literature. Results We present a comparative analysis of nine outstanding topological measures, based on compact vie…
Approximate Matching over Biological RDF Graphs
2012
In the last few years, the amount of biological interaction data discovered and stored in public databases (e.g., KEGG [2]) considerably increased. To this aim, RDF is a powerful representation for interactions (or pathways), since they can be modeled as directed graphs, often referred to as biological networks, where nodes represent cellular components and the (labeled or unlabeled) edges correspond to interactions among components. Often for a given organism some components are known to be linked by well studied interactions. Such groups of components are called modules and they can be represented by sub-graphs in the corresponding biological network model. At today, one of the most impor…
Hub-Centered Gene Network Reconstruction Using Automatic Relevance Determination
2012
Network inference deals with the reconstruction of biological networks from experimental data. A variety of different reverse engineering techniques are available; they differ in the underlying assumptions and mathematical models used. One common problem for all approaches stems from the complexity of the task, due to the combinatorial explosion of different network topologies for increasing network size. To handle this problem, constraints are frequently used, for example on the node degree, number of edges, or constraints on regulation functions between network components. We propose to exploit topological considerations in the inference of gene regulatory networks. Such systems are often…
An Integrative Framework for the Construction of Big Functional Networks
2018
We present a methodology for biological data integration, aiming at building and analysing large functional networks which model complex genotype-phenotype associations. A functional network is a graph where nodes represent cellular components (e.g., genes, proteins, mRNA, etc.) and edges represent associations among such molecules. Different types of components may cohesist in the same network, and associations may be related to physical[biochemical interactions or functional/phenotipic relationships. Due to both the large amount of involved information and the computational complexity typical of the problems in this domain, the proposed framework is based on big data technologies (Spark a…
Network Centralities and Node Ranking
2017
An important problem in network analysis is understanding how much nodes are important in order to “propagate” the information across the input network. To this aim, many centrality measures have been proposed in the literature and our main goal here is that of providing an overview of the most important of them. In particular, we distinguish centrality measures based on walks computation from those based on shortest-paths computation. We also provide some examples in order to clarify how these measures can be calculated, with special attention to Degree Centrality, Closeness Centrality and Betweennes Centrality.
Textual data compression in computational biology: Algorithmic techniques
2012
Abstract In a recent review [R. Giancarlo, D. Scaturro, F. Utro, Textual data compression in computational biology: a synopsis, Bioinformatics 25 (2009) 1575–1586] the first systematic organization and presentation of the impact of textual data compression for the analysis of biological data has been given. Its main focus was on a systematic presentation of the key areas of bioinformatics and computational biology where compression has been used together with a technical presentation of how well-known notions from information theory have been adapted to successfully work on biological data. Rather surprisingly, the use of data compression is pervasive in computational biology. Starting from…
Data Sources and Models
2017
Biological networks rely on the storage and retrieval of data associated to the physical interactions and/or functional relationships among different actors. In particular, the attention may be on the interactions among cellular components, such as proteins, genes, RNA, or for example on phenotype–genotype associations. Data from which biological networks are built are usually stored in public databases, and we provide here a brief summary of the main types of both data and associations, publicly available. Moreover, we also explain how it is possible to construct suitable network models from these associations, focusing on protein–protein interaction networks, gene–disease networks and net…
Multifunctionality of F-rich nucleoporins
2020
Nucleoporins (Nups) represent a range of proteins most known for composing the macromolecular assembly of the nuclear pore complex (NPC). Among them, the family of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) phenylalanine-glycine (FG) rich Nups, form the permeability barrier and coordinate the high-speed nucleocytoplasmic transport in a selective way. Those FG-Nups have been demonstrated to participate in various biological processes besides nucleocytoplasmic transport. The high number of accessible hydrophobic motifs of FG-Nups potentially gives rise to this multifunctionality, enabling them to form unique microenvironments. In this review, we discuss the multifunctionality of disordered and …
(Discriminative) Pattern Discovery on Biological Networks
2017
This work provides a review of biological networks as a model for analysis, presenting and discussing a number of illuminating analyses. Biological networks are an effective model for providing insights about biological mechanisms. Networks with different characteristics are employed for representing different scenarios. This powerful model allows analysts to perform many kinds of analyses which can be mined to provide interesting information about underlying biological behaviors. The text also covers techniques for discovering exceptional patterns, such as a pattern accounting for local similarities and also collaborative effects involving interactions between multiple actors (for example …