Dynamic protein-protein interaction subnetworks of lung cancer in cases with smoking history

Smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer and is linked to 85% of lung cancer cases.However,how lung cancer develops in patients with smoking history remains unclear.Systems approaches that combine human protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and gene expression data are superior to traditional methods.We performed these systems to determine the role that smoking plays in lung cancer development and used the support vector machine (SVM) model to predict PPIs.By defining expression variance (EV),we found 520 dynamic proteins (EV>0.4) using data from the Human Protein Reference Database and Gene Expression Omnibus Database,and built 7 dynamic PPI subnetworks of lung cancer in patients with smoking history.We also determined the primary functions of each subnetwork:signal transduction,apoptosis,and cell migration and adhesion for subnetwork A;cell-sustained angiogenesis for subnetwork B;apoptosis for subnetwork C;and,finally,signal transduction and cell replication and proliferation for subnetworks D-G.The probability distribution of the degree of dynamic protein and static protein differed,clearly showing that the dynamic proteins were not the core proteins which widely connected with their neighbor proteins.There were high correlations among the dynamic proteins,suggesting that the dynamic proteins tend to form specific dynamic modules.We also found that the dynamic proteins were only correlated with the expression of selected proteins but not all neighbor proteins when cancer occurred.

A novel computational method for protein-protein interaction networks prediction of alpha-synuclein

Alpha-synuclein plays an important role in Parkinson's disease(PD).The current study of alpha-synuclein mainly concentrates at the gene level.However, it is found that the study at the protein level has special significance.Meanwhile, there is free information on the Internet, such as databases and algorithms of protein-protein interactions(PPIs).In this paper, a novel method which integrates distributed heterogeneous data sources and algorithms to predict PPIs for alpha-synuclein in silico is proposed.The PPIs generated by the method take advantage of various experimental data, and indicate new information about PPIs for alpha-synuclein.In the end of this paper, the result illustrates that the method is practical.It is hoped that the prediction result obtained by this method can provide guidance for biological experiments of PPIs for alpha-synuclein to reveal possible mechanisms of PD.

Transcriptome Profile Based on Protein-Protein Interaction Networks Provides a Set of Core Genes for Understanding the Metabolic Mechanisms of the Egg-Protecting Behavior in Amphioctopus fangsiao

Marine organisms cannot grow and reproduce without proper metabolic regulation.Within a metabolic network,problems with a given link will affect the normal life activities of the organism.Many metabolic mechanisms associated with behaviors of Am-phioctopus fangsiao are still unclear.Moreover,as a factor affecting the normal growth of A.fangsiao,egg protection has rarely been considered in previous behavioral studies.In this research,we analyzed the transcriptome profile of gene expression in A.fangsiao egg-unprotected larvae and egg-protected larvae,and identified 818 differentially expressed genes(DEGs).We used GO and KEGG enrichment analyses to search for metabolism-related DEGs.Protein-protein interaction networks were constructed to examine the interactions between metabolism-related genes.Twenty hub genes with multiple protein-protein interaction relationships or that were involved in multiple KEGG signaling pathways were obtained and verified by quantitative RT-PCR.We first studied the effects of egg protection on the metabolism of A.fangsiao larvae by means of protein-protein interaction networks,and the results provide va-luable gene resources for understanding the metabolism of invertebrate larvae.The data serve as a foundation for further research on the egg-protecting behavior of invertebrates.

Integrated network analysis of transcriptomic and protein-protein interaction data in taurine-treated hepatic stellate cells

BACKGROUND Studies show that the antifibrotic mechanism of taurine may involve its inhibition of the activation and proliferation of hepatic stellate cells(HSCs). Since the molecular mechanism of taurine-mediated antifibrotic activity has not been fully unveiled and is little studied, it is imperative to use "omics" methods to systematically investigate the molecular mechanism by which taurine inhibits liver fibrosis.AIM To establish a network including transcriptomic and protein-protein interaction data to elucidate the molecular mechanism of taurine-induced HSC apoptosis.METHODS We used microarrays, bioinformatics, protein-protein interaction(PPI) network,and sub-modules to investigate taurine-induced changes in gene expression in human HSCs(LX-2). Subsequently, all of the differentially expressed genes(DEGs) were subjected to gene ontology function and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes pathway enrichment analysis. Furthermore, the interactions of DEGs were explored in a human PPI network, and sub-modules of the DEGs interaction network were analyzed using Cytoscape software.RESULTS A total of 635 DEGs were identified in taurine-treated HSCs when compared with the controls. Of these, 304 genes were statistically significantly up-regulated, and 331 down-regulated. Most of these DEGs were mainly located on the membrane and extracellular region, and are involved in the biological processes of signal transduction, cell proliferation, positive regulation of extracellular regulated protein kinases 1(ERK1) and ERK2 cascade, extrinsic apoptotic signaling pathway and so on. Fifteen significantly enriched pathways with DEGs were identified, including mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK) signaling pathway, peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor signaling pathway,estrogen signaling pathway, Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation, cyclic adenosine monophosphate signaling pathway and so on. By integrating the transcriptomics and human PPI data, nine critical genes, including MMP2, MMP9, MMP21,TIMP3, KLF10, CX3CR1, TGFB1, VEGFB, and EGF, were identified in the PPI network analysis.CONCLUSION Taurine promotes the apoptosis of HSCs via up-regulating TGFB1 and then activating the p38 MAPK-JNK-Caspase9/8/3 pathway. These findings enhance the understanding of the molecular mechanism of taurine-induced HSC apoptosis and provide references for liver disorder therapy.

Yeast protein-protein interaction network model based on biological experimental data

Duplication and divergence have been widely recognized as the two domi- nant evolutionary forces in shaping biological networks, e.g., gene regulatory networks and protein-protein interaction （PPI） networks. It has been shown that the network growth models constructed on the principle of duplication and divergence can recapture the topo- logical properties of real PPI networks. However, such network models only consider the evolution processes. How to select the model parameters with the real biological experi- mental data has not been presented. Therefore, based on the real PPI network statistical data, a yeast PPI network model is constructed. The simulation results indicate that the topological characteristics of the constructed network model are well consistent with those of real PPI networks, especially on sparseness, scale-free, small-world, hierarchical modularity, and disassortativity.

Searching maximum quasi-bicliques from protein-protein interaction network

Searching the maximum bicliques or bipartite subgraphs in a graph is a tough question. We proposed a new and efficient method, Searching Quasi-Bicliques (SQB) algorithm, to detect maximum quasi-bicliques from protein-protein interaction network. As a Divide-and-Conquer method, SQB consists of three steps: first, it divides the protein-protein interaction network into a number of Distance-2-Subgraphs;second, by combining top-down and branch-and-bound methods, SQB seeks quasi-bicliques from every Distance-2-Subgraph;third, all the redundant results are removed. We successfully applied our method on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae dataset and obtained 2754 distinct quasi-bicliques.

A Distributed Framework for Large-scale Protein-protein Interaction Data Analysis and Prediction Using MapReduce

Protein-protein interactions are of great significance for human to understand the functional mechanisms of proteins.With the rapid development of high-throughput genomic technologies,massive protein-protein interaction(PPI)data have been generated,making it very difficult to analyze them efficiently.To address this problem,this paper presents a distributed framework by reimplementing one of state-of-the-art algorithms,i.e.,CoFex,using MapReduce.To do so,an in-depth analysis of its limitations is conducted from the perspectives of efficiency and memory consumption when applying it for large-scale PPI data analysis and prediction.Respective solutions are then devised to overcome these limitations.In particular,we adopt a novel tree-based data structure to reduce the heavy memory consumption caused by the huge sequence information of proteins.After that,its procedure is modified by following the MapReduce framework to take the prediction task distributively.A series of extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of our framework in terms of both efficiency and accuracy.Experimental results well demonstrate that the proposed framework can considerably improve its computational efficiency by more than two orders of magnitude while retaining the same high accuracy.

Protein-protein interactions: Methods, databases, and applications in virus-host study

Almost all the cellular processes in a living system are controlled by proteins:They regulate gene expression,catalyze chemical reactions,transport small molecules across membranes,and transmit signal across membranes.Even,a viral infection is often initiated through virus-host protein interactions.Protein-protein interactions(PPIs)are the physical contacts between two or more proteins and they represent complex biological functions.Nowadays,PPIs have been used to construct PPI networks to study complex pathways for revealing the functions of unknown proteins.Scientists have used PPIs to find the molecular basis of certain diseases and also some potential drug targets.In this review,we will discuss how PPI networks are essential to understand the molecular basis of virus-host relationships and several databases which are dedicated to virus-host interaction studies.Here,we present a short but comprehensive review on PPIs,including the experimental and computational methods of finding PPIs,the databases dedicated to virus-host PPIs,and the associated various applications in protein interaction networks of some lethal viruses with their hosts.

Prediction of Protein-Protein Interactions by a Novel Model Based on Domain Information

Domain-based protein-protein interactions( PPIs) is a problem that has drawn the attentions of many researchers in recent years and it has been studied using lots of computational approaches from many different perspectives. Existing domain-based methods to predict PPIs typically infer domain interactions from known interacting sets of proteins. However,these methods are costly and complex to implement. In this paper, a simple and effective prediction model is proposed. In this model,an improved multiinstance learning( MIL) algorithm( MilCaA) is designed that doesn't need to take the domain interactions into consideration to construct MIL bags. Then, the pseudo-amino acid composition( PseAAC) transformation method is used to encode the instances in a multi-instance bag and the principal components analysis( PCA) is also used to reduce the feature dimension. Finally, several traditional machine learning and MIL methods are used to verify the proposed model. Experimental results demonstrate that MilCaA performs better than state-of-the-art techniques including the traditional machine learning methods which are widely used in PPIs prediction.

A hybrid method for extraction of protein-protein interactions from literature

In this work, a hybrid method is proposed to eliminate the limitations of traditional protein-protein interactions （PPIs） extraction methods, such as pattern learning and machine learning. Each sentence from the biomedical literature containing a protein pair describes a PPI which is predicted by first learning syntax patterns typical of PPIs from training corpus and then using their presence as features, along with bag-of-word features in a maximum entropy model. Tested on the BioCreAtIve corpus, the PPIs extraction method, which achieved a precision rate of 64%, recall rate of 60%, improved the performance in terms of F1 value by 11% compared with the component pure pattern- based and bag-of-word methods. The results on this test set were also compared with other three extraction methods and found to improve the performance remarkably.

酒精性肝炎自噬关键基因的筛选及生物信息学分析

目的筛选酒精性肝炎(AH)的自噬关键基因,探讨AH潜在的生物标志物和治疗靶点。方法采用基因表达综合数据库(GEO)中的2个AH基因芯片和从MSigDB、GeneCards数据库中获得的自噬相关数据集,通过加权基因共表达网络分析(WGCNA)获取关键基因。对筛选的关键基因进行基因本体(GO)、京都基因和基因组百科全书(KEGG)功能富集分析,蛋白质相互作用(PPI)分析,免疫浸润分析,构建信使RNA(mRNA)-微小RNA(miRNA)网络,进行酒精性肝病不同分期的自噬相关关键基因的表达差异分析,并进一步通过实时荧光定量逆转录聚合酶链反应(RT-qPCR)在AH患者和小鼠肝脏组织中验证。结果本研究筛选得到了11个与AH自噬相关的基因(EEF1A2、CFTR、SOX4、TREM2、CTHRC1、HSPB8、TUBB3、PRKAA2、RNASE1、MTCL1、HGF),均为上调基因。在AH患者和小鼠肝脏组织中,SOX4、TREM2、HSPB8、PRKAA2在AH组中的相对表达量均高于对照组。结论SOX4、TREM2、HSPB8、PRKAA2可能是AH潜在的生物标志物和治疗靶点。

Structure-based protein-protein interaction networks and drug design

Proteins carry out their functions by interacting with other proteins and small molecules, forming a complex interaction network. In this review, we briefly introduce classical graph theory based protein-protein interaction networks. We also describe the commonly used experimental methods to construct these networks, and the insights that can be gained from these networks. We then discuss the recent transition from graph theory based networks to structure based protein-protein interaction networks and the advantages of the latter over the former, using two networks as examples. We further discuss the usefulness of structure based protein-protein interaction networks for drug discovery, with a special emphasis on drug repositioning.

Proteomic dissection of biological pathways/processes through profiling protein-protein interaction networks

Cellular functions, either under the normal or pathological conditions or under different stresses, are the results of the coordinated action of multiple proteins interacting in macromolecular complexes or assemblies. The precise determination of the specific composition of protein complexes, especially using scalable and high-throughput methods, represents a systematic approach toward revealing particular cellular biological functions. In this regard, the direct profiling protein-protein interactions (PPIs) represent an efficient way to dissect functional pathways for revealing novel protein functions. In this review, we illustrate the technological evolution for the large-scale and precise identification of PPIs toward higher physiologically relevant accuracy. These techniques aim at improving the efficiency of complex pull-down, the signal specificity and accuracy in distinguishing specific PPIs, and the accuracy of identifying physiological relevant PPIs. A newly developed streamline proteomic approach for mapping the binary relationship of PPIs in a protein complex is introduced.

RNA sequencing of exosomes secreted by fibroblast and Schwann cells elucidates mechanisms underlying peripheral nerve regeneration

Exosomes exhibit complex biological functions and mediate a variety of biological processes,such as promoting axonal regeneration and functional recove ry after injury.Long non-coding RNAs(IncRNAs)have been reported to play a crucial role in axonal regeneration.Howeve r,the role of the IncRNA-microRNAmessenger RNA(mRNA)-competitive endogenous RNA(ceRNA)network in exosome-mediated axonal regeneration remains unclear.In this study,we performed RNA transcriptome sequencing analysis to assess mRNA expression patterns in exosomes produced by cultured fibroblasts(FC-EXOs)and Schwann cells(SCEXOs).Diffe rential gene expression analysis,Gene Ontology analysis,Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis,and protein-protein intera ction network analysis were used to explo re the functions and related pathways of RNAs isolated from FC-EXOs and SC-EXOs.We found that the ribosome-related central gene Rps5 was enriched in FC-EXOs and SC-EXOs,which suggests that it may promote axonal regeneration.In addition,using the miRWalk and Starbase prediction databases,we constructed a regulatory network of ceRNAs targeting Rps5,including 27 microRNAs and five IncRNAs.The ceRNA regulatory network,which included Ftx and Miat,revealed that exsosome-derived Rps5 inhibits scar formation and promotes axonal regeneration and functional recovery after nerve injury.Our findings suggest that exosomes derived from fibro blast and Schwann cells could be used to treat injuries of peripheral nervous system.

快速的基于蚁群聚类的PPI网络功能模块检测方法

针对蚁群聚类在蛋白质相互作用(protein-protein interaction,PPI)网络中进行功能模块检测问题上时间性能的不足,提出一种快速的基于蚁群聚类的PPI网络功能模块检测(fast ant colony clustering for functional module detection,FACC-FMD)方法.该算法计算每个蛋白质与核心组蛋白质的相似度,根据拾起放下模型进行聚类,得到的初始聚类结果中功能模块之间相似度很小,省去了原始蚁群聚类算法中的合并和过滤操作,缩短了求解时间.同时该算法根据蛋白质的关键性对蚁群聚类中的拾起放下操作做了更严格的约束,以减少拾起放下的次数,加速了聚类的过程.在多个PPI网络上的实验表明:与原始蚁群聚类方法相比,FACC-FMD大幅度提高了时间性能,同时取得了良好的检测质量,而且与近年来的一些经典算法相比在多项性能指标上也具有一定的优势.

面向PCP-MS数据的PPI网络推断算法

随着蛋白质组学的发展,研究者们开始聚焦于人类的全部蛋白质相互作用(Protein-Protein Interaction,PPI)网络的建立,质谱分析技术已成为预测蛋白质相互作用的代表方法。质谱技术是构建蛋白质相互作用网络的主要实验手段之一,基于质谱技术产生了大量的蛋白质纯化数据,如AP-MS数据和PCP-MS数据等。这些数据为PPI网络的构建提供了重要的数据支持,但是通过人工的手段来构建PPI网络不仅低效,而且很不现实。因此,面向PCP-MS数据的网络推断算法是生物信息学研究的一个热点问题。文中针对一类主流的质谱(PCP-MS)数据的PPI网络构建算法问题开展研究,从解决目前存在的瓶颈问题出发,达到构建高质量PPI网络的目的。现有的面向PCP-MS数据的PPI网络推断算法的研究还处于初级阶段,相关方法较少。同时,算法结果的质量还存在着一些问题:1)很多错误的相互作用被包含在不同的推断算法结果中,同时一些正确的相互作用在结果中被遗漏;2)不同的推断算法在同一数据集上的表现差异较大;3)对于不同的数据集,同一算法表现性能的波动方差较大。因此,为了从PCP-MS数据中推断出结构可靠、质量较高的PPI网络,文中提出一种基于相关性分析与排序整合的PPI评分方法。该方法基于无监督学习,包括以下两个步骤:1)计算蛋白质之间的相关系数,得到多组相关性结果;2)采用排序整合的方法对多组结果进行整合,得到整合后的PPI分数。实验结果表明,所提方法在不使用参考标准的情况下,可以达到与有监督学习方法接近的结果。

Investigating the Impact of Ocean Acidification on Anti-Stress Mechanisms in Sepia esculenta Larvae Based on Transcriptome Profiling

With the rapid development of oil,energy,power and other industries,CO_(2) emissions rise sharply,which will cause a large amount of CO_(2) in the air be absorbed by the ocean and lead to ocean acidification.The growth and development of organisms can be seriously affected by acidified seawater.Sepia esculenta is a mollusk with high nutritional and economic value and is widely cultured in offshore waters of China.Larvae are the early life forms of the organism and are more vulnerable to changes in the external environment.Too low pH will lead to some adverse reactions in larvae,which will affect metabolism,immune response and other life activities.In this study,we sequenced the transcriptome of S.esculenta subjected to acidified seawater stress and identified 1072differentially expressed genes(DEGs).The detected atypical expression of DEGs substantiates cellular malformation and translocation in S.esculenta under low pH stimulation.Simultaneously,this also substantiates the notable impact of ocean acidification on mollusks.These DEGs were used for functional enrichment analysis of GO and KEGG,and the top twenty items of the biological process classification in GO terms and 11 KEGG signaling pathways were significantly enriched.Finally,the constructed proteinprotein interaction network(PPI)was used to analyze protein-protein interactions,and 12 key DEGs and 3 hub genes were identified.The reliability of 12 genes was verified by quantitative RT-PCR.A comprehensive analysis of the KEGG signaling pathway and PPI revealed that ocean acidification leads to abnormalities in lipid metabolism in S.esculenta larvae,which can lead to cancer development and metastasis,accompanied by some degree of inflammation.The results of the study will help to further investigate the physiological processes of S.esculenta when stimulated by ocean acidification,and provide a reference to cope with the captive breeding of S.esculenta affected by acidification.

基于文化算法的PPI网络功能模块检测方法

为了解决蛋白质相互作用(protein-protein interaction,PPI)网络功能模块检测问题,提出一种基于文化算法的PPI网络功能模块检测(CA-FMD)方法.首先,每个个体采用基于节点邻居有序表的编码方式表示功能模块检测问题的一个可行解.然后,利用文化算法的双层进化机制获得最优解,其中,上层机制用来模拟信念空间中群体经验的进化,下层机制用来刻画种群空间中个体的进化.最后,借助2个空间的相互作用和影响完成解的优化.在3个数据集上的实验结果表明:与其他算法相比,CA-FMD方法在多项评价指标上都具有明显的优势.

Computational and bioinformatics tools for understanding disease mechanisms

Computational methods have significantly transformed biomedical research,offering a comprehensive exploration of disease mechanisms and molecular protein functions.This article reviews a spectrum of computational tools and network analysis databases that play a crucial role in identifying potential interactions and signaling networks contributing to the onset of disease states.The utilization of protein/gene interaction and genetic variation databases,coupled with pathway analysis can facilitate the identification of potential drug targets.By bridging the gap between molecular-level information and disease understanding,this review contributes insights into the impactful utilization of computational methods,paving the way for targeted interventions and therapeutic advancements in biomedical research.

Essential proteins identification method based on four-order distances and subcellular localization information

Essential proteins are inseparable in cell growth and survival. The study of essential proteins is important for understanding cellular functions and biological mechanisms. Therefore, various computable methods have been proposed to identify essential proteins. Unfortunately, most methods based on network topology only consider the interactions between a protein and its neighboring proteins, and not the interactions with its higher-order distance proteins. In this paper, we propose the DSEP algorithm in which we integrated network topology properties and subcellular localization information in protein–protein interaction(PPI) networks based on four-order distances, and then used random walks to identify the essential proteins. We also propose a method to calculate the finite-order distance of the network, which can greatly reduce the time complexity of our algorithm. We conducted a comprehensive comparison of the DSEP algorithm with 11 existing classical algorithms to identify essential proteins with multiple evaluation methods. The results show that DSEP is superior to these 11 methods.