Dataset Information

Equal opportunity for low-degree network nodes: a PageRank-based method for protein target identification in metabolic graphs.

ABSTRACT: Biological network data, such as metabolic-, signaling- or physical interaction graphs of proteins are increasingly available in public repositories for important species. Tools for the quantitative analysis of these networks are being developed today. Protein network-based drug target identification methods usually return protein hubs with large degrees in the networks as potentially important targets. Some known, important protein targets, however, are not hubs at all, and perturbing protein hubs in these networks may have several unwanted physiological effects, due to their interaction with numerous partners. Here, we show a novel method applicable in networks with directed edges (such as metabolic networks) that compensates for the low degree (non-hub) vertices in the network, and identifies important nodes, regardless of their hub properties. Our method computes the PageRank for the nodes of the network, and divides the PageRank by the in-degree (i.e., the number of incoming edges) of the node. This quotient is the same in all nodes in an undirected graph (even for large- and low-degree nodes, that is, for hubs and non-hubs as well), but may differ significantly from node to node in directed graphs. We suggest to assign importance to non-hub nodes with large PageRank/in-degree quotient. Consequently, our method gives high scores to nodes with large PageRank, relative to their degrees: therefore non-hub important nodes can easily be identified in large networks. We demonstrate that these relatively high PageRank scores have biological relevance: the method correctly finds numerous already validated drug targets in distinct organisms (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Plasmodium falciparum and MRSA Staphylococcus aureus), and consequently, it may suggest new possible protein targets as well. Additionally, our scoring method was not chosen arbitrarily: its value for all nodes of all undirected graphs is constant; therefore its high value captures importance in the directed edge structure of the graph.

SUBMITTER: Banky D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3558500 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Equal opportunity for low-degree network nodes: a PageRank-based method for protein target identification in metabolic graphs.

Bánky Dániel D Iván Gábor G Grolmusz Vince V

PloS one 20130129 1

Biological network data, such as metabolic-, signaling- or physical interaction graphs of proteins are increasingly available in public repositories for important species. Tools for the quantitative analysis of these networks are being developed today. Protein network-based drug target identification methods usually return protein hubs with large degrees in the networks as potentially important targets. Some known, important protein targets, however, are not hubs at all, and perturbing protein h ...[more]

PMID: 23382878

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundThe amount of plant data such as taxonomical classification, morphological characteristics, ecological attributes and geological distribution in textual and image forms has increased rapidly due to emerging research and technologies. Therefore, it is crucial for experts as well as the public to discern meaningful relationships from this vast amount of data using appropriate methods. The data are often presented in lengthy texts and tables, which make gaining new insights difficult. The study proposes a visual-based representation to display data to users in a meaningful way. This method emphasises the relationships between different data sets.MethodThis study involves four main steps which translate text-based results from Extensible Markup Language (XML) serialisation format into graphs. The four steps include: (1) conversion of ontological dataset as graph model data; (2) query from graph model data; (3) transformation of text-based results in XML serialisation format into a graphical form; and (4) display of results to the user via a graphical user interface (GUI). Ontological data for plants and samples of trees and shrubs were used as the dataset to demonstrate how plant-based data could be integrated into the proposed data visualisation.ResultsA visualisation system named plant visualisation system was developed. This system provides a GUI that enables users to perform the query process, as well as a graphical viewer to display the results of the query in the form of a network graph. The efficiency of the developed visualisation system was measured by performing two types of user evaluations: a usability heuristics evaluation, and a query and visualisation evaluation.DiscussionThe relationships between the data were visualised, enabling the users to easily infer the knowledge and correlations between data. The results from the user evaluation show that the proposed visualisation system is suitable for both expert and novice users, with or without computer skills. This technique demonstrates the practicability of using a computer assisted-tool by providing cognitive analysis for understanding relationships between data. Therefore, the results benefit not only botanists, but also novice users, especially those that are interested to know more about plants.

Dataset Information

Equal opportunity for low-degree network nodes: a PageRank-based method for protein target identification in metabolic graphs.

Publications

Equal opportunity for low-degree network nodes: a PageRank-based method for protein target identification in metabolic graphs.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets