The human disease network

Abstract

In this paper, we review the construction, the application, the meaning and the interpretation of the Diseasome network, which enables a systematic connection between the molecular and the phenotype level, and derived models like the human disease network. Further, we are surveying recent conceptual and methodological enhancements that integrate data from diverse sources, e.g., from protein databases or genome-wide association studies. For our review, we assume a “data-centric” view that allows to distinguish different approaches based on the types of data used in a model. In addition, we discuss the need for network-based approaches in medicine.