Wataru Someya, Tatsuya Akutsu, Jean-Marc Schwartz, Jose C. Nacher
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Recent controllability analyses have demonstrated that driver nodes tend to be associated to genes related to important biological functions as well as human diseases. While researchers have focused on identifying critical nodes, intermittent nodes have received much less attention. Here, we propose a new efficient algorithm based on the Hamming distance for computing the importance of intermittent nodes using a Minimum Dominating Set (MDS)-based control model. We refer to this metric as criticality. The application of the proposed algorithm to compute criticality under the MDS control framework allows us to unveil the biological importance and roles of the intermittent nodes in different network systems, from cellular level such as signaling pathways and cell-cell interactions such as cytokine networks, to the complete nervous system of the nematode worm C. elegans. Taken together, the developed computational tools may open new avenues for investigating the role of intermittent nodes in many biological systems of interest in the context of network control.
期刊介绍:
npj Systems Biology and Applications is an online Open Access journal dedicated to publishing the premier research that takes a systems-oriented approach. The journal aims to provide a forum for the presentation of articles that help define this nascent field, as well as those that apply the advances to wider fields. We encourage studies that integrate, or aid the integration of, data, analyses and insight from molecules to organisms and broader systems. Important areas of interest include not only fundamental biological systems and drug discovery, but also applications to health, medical practice and implementation, big data, biotechnology, food science, human behaviour, broader biological systems and industrial applications of systems biology.
We encourage all approaches, including network biology, application of control theory to biological systems, computational modelling and analysis, comprehensive and/or high-content measurements, theoretical, analytical and computational studies of system-level properties of biological systems and computational/software/data platforms enabling such studies.