基于虚拟基因敲除的疾病分子网络关键节点辨识方法

Essential Nodes Identification in Disease Molecular Network Based on Virtual Gene Knockout

目的:建立基于虚拟基因敲除的关键节点辨识方法。方法:以疾病相关分子网络为载体,针对网络中节点进行虚拟敲除,通过敲出前后其他节点对生物标记物的节点影响力值变化来评价该节点的关键性,以阿尔茨海默病相关疾病分子网络为例来验证方法的可靠性。结果:阿尔茨海默病已知靶点的虚拟敲除,使其他节点的节点影响力值均有显著下降,而随机节点的敲除无此现象。结论:本方法能够验证已知靶点的关键性并筛选出新的关键节点,具有可行性和可靠性。

This paper was aimed to establish essential nodes identification method based on the virtual gene knockout. The disease-related molecular network was used as a subject. This paper virtually knocked-out certain node of the network and thus evaluated the importance of a particular node by introducing the Node Impact Counter （NIC）. At last Alzheimer^s disease-related network was taken as an example to validate the method. The results showed that the NIC of other nodes decreased significantly after knocking out the known target for Alzheimer^s disease, while such phenomenon is not observed when knocking out the non-target nodes. It was con- cluded that this method can be used to screen out new essential nodes. Examples on AlzheimerJs disease-related network show that the method is feasible and reliable.