Dataset Information

Predicting Variabilities in Cardiac Gene Expression with a Boolean Network Incorporating Uncertainty.

ABSTRACT: Gene interactions in cells can be represented by gene regulatory networks. A Boolean network models gene interactions according to rules where gene expression is represented by binary values (on / off or {1, 0}). In reality, however, the gene's state can have multiple values due to biological properties. Furthermore, the noisy nature of the experimental design results in uncertainty about a state of the gene. Here we present a new Boolean network paradigm to allow intermediate values on the interval [0, 1]. As in the Boolean network, fixed points or attractors of such a model correspond to biological phenotypes or states. We use our new extension of the Boolean network paradigm to model gene expression in first and second heart field lineages which are cardiac progenitor cell populations involved in early vertebrate heart development. By this we are able to predict additional biological phenotypes that the Boolean model alone is not able to identify without utilizing additional biological knowledge. The additional phenotypes predicted by the model were confirmed by published biological experiments. Furthermore, the new method predicts gene expression propensities for modelled but yet to be analyzed genes.

SUBMITTER: Grieb M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4514755 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Predicting Variabilities in Cardiac Gene Expression with a Boolean Network Incorporating Uncertainty.

Grieb Melanie M Burkovski Andre A Sträng J Eric JE Kraus Johann M JM Groß Alexander A Palm Günther G Kühl Michael M Kestler Hans A HA

PloS one 20150724 7

Gene interactions in cells can be represented by gene regulatory networks. A Boolean network models gene interactions according to rules where gene expression is represented by binary values (on / off or {1, 0}). In reality, however, the gene's state can have multiple values due to biological properties. Furthermore, the noisy nature of the experimental design results in uncertainty about a state of the gene. Here we present a new Boolean network paradigm to allow intermediate values on the inte ...[more]

PMID: 26207376

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Project description:Gene-on-gene regulations are key components of every living organism. Dynamical abstract models of genetic regulatory networks help explain the genome's evolvability and robustness. These properties can be attributed to the structural topology of the graph formed by genes, as vertices, and regulatory interactions, as edges. Moreover, the actual gene interaction of each gene is believed to play a key role in the stability of the structure. With advances in biology, some effort was deployed to develop update functions in boolean models that include recent knowledge. We combine real-life gene interaction networks with novel update functions in a boolean model. We use two sub-networks of biological organisms, the yeast cell-cycle and the mouse embryonic stem cell, as topological support for our system. On these structures, we substitute the original random update functions by a novel threshold-based dynamic function in which the promoting and repressing effect of each interaction is considered. We use a third real-life regulatory network, along with its inferred boolean update functions to validate the proposed update function. Results of this validation hint to increased biological plausibility of the threshold-based function. To investigate the dynamical behavior of this new model, we visualized the phase transition between order and chaos into the critical regime using Derrida plots. We complement the qualitative nature of Derrida plots with an alternative measure, the criticality distance, that also allows to discriminate between regimes in a quantitative way. Simulation on both real-life genetic regulatory networks show that there exists a set of parameters that allows the systems to operate in the critical region. This new model includes experimentally derived biological information and recent discoveries, which makes it potentially useful to guide experimental research. The update function confers additional realism to the model, while reducing the complexity and solution space, thus making it easier to investigate.

Dataset Information

Predicting Variabilities in Cardiac Gene Expression with a Boolean Network Incorporating Uncertainty.

Publications

Predicting Variabilities in Cardiac Gene Expression with a Boolean Network Incorporating Uncertainty.

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