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In recent years, drug sensitivity prediction has garnered a great deal of attention due to the growing interest in precision medicine. Several computational methods have been developed for drug sensitivity prediction and the identification of related markers. However, most previous studies have ignored genetic interaction, although complex diseases (e.g., cancer) involve many genes intricately connected in a molecular network rather than the abnormality of a single gene. To effectively predict drug sensitivity and understand its mechanism, we propose a novel strategy for explainable drug sensitivity prediction based on sample-specific gene regulatory networks, designated Xprediction. Our strategy first estimates sample-specific gene regulatory networks that enable us to identify the molecular interplay underlying varying clinical characteristics of cell lines. We then, predict drug sensitivity based on the estimated sample-specific gene regulatory networks. The predictive models are based on machine learning approaches, i.e., random forest, kernel support vector machine, and deep neural network. Although the machine learning models provide remarkable results for prediction and classification, we cannot understand how the models reach their decisions. In other words, the methods suffer from the black box problem and thus, we cannot identify crucial molecular interactions that involve drug sensitivity-related mechanisms. To address this issue, we propose a method that describes the importance of each molecular interaction for the drug sensitivity prediction result. The proposed method enables us to identify crucial gene-gene interactions and thereby, interpret the prediction results based on the identified markers. To evaluate our strategy, we applied Xprediction to EGFR-TKIs prediction based on drug sensitivity specific gene regulatory networks and identified important molecular interactions for EGFR-TKIs prediction. Our strategy effectively performed drug sensitivity prediction compared with prediction based on the expression levels of genes. We also verified through literature, the EGFR-TKIs-related mechanisms of a majority of the identified markers. We expect our strategy to be a useful tool for predicting tasks and uncovering complex mechanisms related to pharmacological profiles, such as mechanisms of acquired drug resistance or sensitivity of cancer cells., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In recent years, personalized gene regulatory networks have received significant attention, and interpretation of the multilayer networks has been a critical issue for a comprehensive understanding of gene regulatory systems. Although several statistical and machine learning approaches have been developed and applied to reveal sample-specific regulatory pathways, integrative understanding of the massive multilayer networks remains a challenge. To resolve this problem, we propose a novel artificial intelligence (AI) strategy for comprehensive gene regulatory network analysis. In our strategy, personalized gene networks corresponding specific clinical characteristic are constructed and the constructed network is considered as a second-order tensor. Then, an explainable AI method based on deep learning is applied to decompose the multilayer networks, thus we can reveal all-encompassing gene regulatory systems characterized by clinical features of patients. To evaluate the proposed methodology, we apply our method to the multilayer gene networks under varying conditions of an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process. From the comprehensive analysis of multilayer networks, we identified novel markers, and the biological mechanisms of the identified genes and their reciprocal mechanisms are verified through the literature. Although any biological knowledge about the identified genes was not incorporated in our analysis, our data-driven approach based on AI approach provides biologically reliable results. Furthermore, the results provide crucial evidences to reveal biological mechanism related to various diseases, e.g., keratinocyte proliferation. The use of explainable AI method based on the tensor decomposition enables us to reveal global and novel mechanisms of gene regulatory system from the massive multiple networks, which cannot be demonstrated by existing methods. We expect that the proposed method provides a new insight into network biology and it will be a useful tool to integrative gene network analysis related complex architectures of diseases., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

There are regional and/or ethnic differences in tumorigenic pathways among several types of cancer, including prostate cancer (PCa). However, information on genome‑wide gene alterations and the transcriptome is currently only available for PCa patients from Western countries. In order to profile the genetic alterations in Japanese patients with PCa, new panels were created to examine nucleotide sequence variations in 71 selected PCa‑related genes (KCC71) and to detect all fusion RNA transcripts known in PCa (PCaFusion). An analysis of 21 Japanese PCa cases identified 33 different somatic variants in 24 genes in the KCC71 panel, including 2 in SPOP (F102V and F133L), 2 in BRCA2 (I1859fs and R2318ter, resulting in premature termination of the polypeptide), and 1 each in BRAF (K601E), CDH1 (E880K) and RB1 (R621S), as pathogenic alterations. Unexpectedly, the TMPRSS2‑ERG fusion transcript was detected in only 1 case, although the SLC45A3‑ELK4 and USP9Y‑TTTY15 fusion transcripts, known as transcription‑mediated chimeric RNAs, were detected in all examined cases. A new pathway analysis with The Cancer Network Galaxy (TCNG), a cancer gene regulatory network database, was also applied in an attempt to predict molecular pathways implicated in PCa in the Japanese population. Based on the 24 genes having somatic variants identified by the panel analysis as initial seed genes, a putative core network was finally established, including 5 identified genes, namely TNK2, SOX9, CDH1, FOXA1 and TP53, with high commonality from TCNG datasets. These genes are expected to be involved in tumor development, as revealed by the results of an enrichment analysis with Gene Ontology terms. This analysis must be further extended to include more cases in order to verify this method and also to elucidate the characteristics of PCa in Japanese patients.

There is currently much discussion about sample (patient)-specific gene regulatory network identification, since the efficiently constructed sample-specific gene networks lead to effective personalized cancer therapy. Although statistical approaches have been proposed for inferring gene regulatory networks, the methods cannot reveal sample-specific characteristics because the existing methods, such as an L 1 -type regularization, provide averaged results for all samples. Thus, we cannot reveal sample-specific characteristics in transcriptional regulatory networks. To settle on this issue, the NetworkProfiler was proposed based on the kernel-based L 1 -type regularization. The NetworkProfiler imposes a weight on each sample based on the Gaussian kernal function for controlling effect of samples on modeling a target sample, where the amount of weight depends on similarity of cancer characteristics between samples. The method, however, cannot perform gene regulatory network identification well for a target sample in a sparse region (i.e., for a target sample, there are only a few samples having a similar characteristic of the target sample, where the characteristic is considered as a modulator in sample-specific gene network construction), since a constant bandwidth in the Gaussian kernel function cannot effectively group samples for modeling a target sample in sparse region. The cancer characteristics, such as an anti-cancer drug sensitivity, are usually nonuniformly distributed, and thus modeling for samples in a sparse region is also a crucial issue. We propose a novel kernel-based L 1 -type regularization method based on a modified k-nearest neighbor (KNN)-Gaussian kernel function, called an adaptive NetworkProfiler. By using the modified KNN-Gaussian kernel function, our method provides robust results against the distribution of modulators, and properly groups samples according to a cancer characteristic for sample-specific analysis. Furthermore, we propose a sample-specific generalized cross-validation for choosing the sample-specific tuning parameters in the kernel-based L 1 -type regularization method. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed adaptive NetworkProfiler effectively performs sample-specific gene network construction. We apply the proposed statistical strategy to the publicly available Sanger Genomic data analysis, and extract anti-cancer drug sensitivity-specific gene regulatory networks.

We propose a novel adaptive penalized logistic regression modeling strategy based on Wilcoxon rank sum test (WRST) to effectively uncover driver genes in classification. In order to incorporate significance of gene in classification, we first measure significance of each gene by gene ranking method based on WRST, and then the adaptive L 1 -type penalty is discriminately imposed on each gene depending on the measured importance degree of gene. The incorporating significance of genes into adaptive logistic regression enables us to impose a large amount of penalty on low ranking genes, and thus noise genes are easily deleted from the model and we can effectively identify driver genes. Monte Carlo experiments and real world example are conducted to investigate effectiveness of the proposed approach. In Sanger data analysis, we introduce a strategy to identify expression modules indicating gene regulatory mechanisms via the principal component analysis (PCA), and perform logistic regression modeling based on not a single gene but gene expression modules. We can see through Monte Carlo experiments and real world example that the proposed adaptive penalized logistic regression outperforms feature selection and classification compared with existing L 1 -type regularization. The discriminately imposed penalty based on WRST effectively performs crucial gene selection, and thus our method can improve classification accuracy without interruption of noise genes. Furthermore, it can be seen through Sanger data analysis that the method for gene expression modules based on principal components and their loading scores provides interpretable results in biological viewpoints.

Driver gene selection is crucial to understand the heterogeneous system of cancer. To identity cancer driver genes, various statistical strategies have been proposed, especially the L 1 -type regularization methods have drawn a large amount of attention. However, the statistical approaches have been developed purely from algorithmic and statistical point, and the existing studies have applied the statistical approaches to genomic data analysis without consideration of biological knowledge. We consider a statistical strategy incorporating biological knowledge to identify cancer driver gene. The alterations of copy number have been considered to driver cancer pathogenesis processes, and the region of strong interaction of copy number alterations and expression levels was known as a tumor-related symptom. We incorporate the influence of copy number alterations on expression levels to cancer driver gene-selection processes. To quantify the dependence of copy number alterations on expression levels, we consider [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] effects of copy number alterations on expression levels of genes, and incorporate the symptom of tumor pathogenesis to gene-selection procedures. We then proposed an interaction-based feature-selection strategy based on the adaptive L 1 -type regularization and random lasso procedures. The proposed method imposes a large amount of penalty on genes corresponding to a low dependency of the two features, thus the coefficients of the genes are estimated to be small or exactly 0. It implies that the proposed method can provide biologically relevant results in cancer driver gene selection. Monte Carlo simulations and analysis of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data show that the proposed strategy is effective for high-dimensional genomic data analysis. Furthermore, the proposed method provides reliable and biologically relevant results for cancer driver gene selection in TCGA data analysis.

Background: As a result of recent advances in biotechnology, many findings related to intracellular systems have been published, e.g., transcription factor (TF) information. Although we can reproduce biological systems by incorporating such findings and describing their dynamics as mathematical equations, simulation results can be inconsistent with data from biological observations if there are inaccurate or unknown parts in the constructed system. For the completion of such systems, relationships among genes have been inferred through several computational approaches, which typically apply several abstractions, e.g., linearization, to handle the heavy computational cost in evaluating biological systems. However, since these approximations can generate false regulations, computational methods that can infer regulatory relationships based on less abstract models incorporating existing knowledge have been strongly required., Results: We propose a new data assimilation algorithm that utilizes a simple nonlinear regulatory model and a state space representation to infer gene regulatory networks (GRNs) using time-course observation data. For the estimation of the hidden state variables and the parameter values, we developed a novel method termed a higher moment ensemble particle filter (HMEnPF) that can retain first four moments of the conditional distributions through filtering steps. Starting from the original model, e.g., derived from the literature, the proposed algorithm can sequentially evaluate candidate models, which are generated by partially changing the current best model, to find the model that can best predict the data. For the performance evaluation, we generated six synthetic data based on two real biological networks and evaluated effectiveness of the proposed algorithm by improving the networks inferred by previous methods. We then applied time-course observation data of rat skeletal muscle stimulated with corticosteroid. Since a corticosteroid pharmacogenomic pathway, its kinetic/dynamics and TF candidate genes have been partially elucidated, we incorporated these findings and inferred an extended pathway of rat pharmacogenomics., Conclusions: Through the simulation study, the proposed algorithm outperformed previous methods and successfully improved the regulatory structure inferred by the previous methods. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm could extend a corticosteroid related pathway, which has been partially elucidated, with incorporating several information sources.

Gene networks and graphs are crucial tools for understanding a heterogeneous system of cancer, since cancer is a disease that does not involve individual genes but combinations of genes associated with oncogenic process. A goal of genomic data analysis via gene networks is to identify both gene networks and individual genes within the selected networks. Existing methods, however, perform only network selection, and thus all genes in selected networks are included in models. This leads to overfitting when uncovering driver genes, and the results are not biologically interpretable. To accomplish both "groupwise sparsity" and "within group sparsity" for identifying driver genes based on biological knowledge (i.e., predefined overlapping groups of features), we propose a sparse overlapping group lasso via duplicated predictors in extended space. The proposed method effectively identifies driver genes and their interactions using known biological pathway information. Monte Carlo simulations and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project data analysis indicate that the proposed method is effective for fitting a regression model (i.e., feature selection and prediction accuracy) constructed with duplicated predictors in overlapping groups. In the TCGA data analysis, we uncover potential cancer driver genes via expression modules and gene networks constructed by multi-omics data and identify that the uncovered genes have strong evidences as a cancer driver gene. The proposed method is a useful tool for identifying cancer driver genes and for integrative multi-omics analysis.

Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) play a central role in sustaining complex biological systems in cells. Although we can construct GRNs by integrating biological interactions that have been recorded in literature, they can include suspicious data and a lack of information. Therefore, there has been an urgent need for an approach by which the validity of constructed networks can be evaluated; simulation-based methods have been applied in which biological observational data are assimilated. However, these methods apply nonlinear models that require high computational power to evaluate even one network consisting of only several genes. Therefore, to explore candidate networks whose simulation models can better predict the data by modifying and extending literature-based GRNs, an efficient and versatile method is urgently required. We applied a combinatorial transcription model, which can represent combinatorial regulatory effects of genes, as a biological simulation model, to reproduce the dynamic behavior of gene expressions within a state space model. Under the model, we applied the unscented Kalman filter to obtain the approximate posterior probability distribution of the hidden state to efficiently estimate parameter values maximizing prediction ability for observational data by the EM-algorithm. Utilizing the method, we propose a novel algorithm to modify GRNs reported in the literature so that their simulation models become consistent with observed data. The effectiveness of our approach was validated through comparison analysis to the previous methods using synthetic networks. Finally, as an application example, a Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG)-based yeast cell cycle network was extended with additional candidate genes to better predict the real mRNA expressions data using the proposed method.

Accumulation of genetic and epigenetic changes alters regulation of a web of interconnected genes including microRNAs (miRNAs), which confer hallmark capabilities and characteristic cancer features. In this study, the miRNA and messenger RNA expression profiles of 126 non-small cell lung cancer specimens were analyzed, with special attention given to the diversity of lung adenocarcinomas. Of those, 76 adenocarcinomas were classified into two major subtypes, developing lung-like and adult lung-like, based on their distinctive miRNA expression profiles resembling those of either developing or adult lungs, respectively. A systems biology-based approach using a Bayesian network and non-parametric regression was employed to estimate the gene regulatory circuitry functioning in patient tumors in order to identify subnetworks enriched for genes with differential expression between the two major subtypes. miR-30d and miR-195, identified as hub genes in such subnetworks, had lower levels of expression in the developing lung-like subtype, whereas introduction of miR-30d or miR-195 into the lung cancer cell lines evoked shifts of messenger RNA expression profiles toward the adult lung-like subtype. Conversely, the influence of miR-30d and miR-195 was significantly different between the developing lung-like and adult lung-like subtypes in our analysis of the patient data set. In addition, RRM2, a child gene of the miR-30d-centered subnetwork, was found to be a direct target of miR-30d. Together, our findings reveal the existence of two miRNA expression profile-defined lung adenocarcinoma subtypes with distinctive clinicopathologic features and also suggest the usefulness of a systems biology-based approach to gain insight into the altered regulatory circuitry involved in cancer development., (© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Comprehensive understanding of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) is a major challenge in the field of systems biology. Currently, there are two main approaches in GRN analysis using time-course observation data, namely an ordinary differential equation (ODE)-based approach and a statistical model-based approach. The ODE-based approach can generate complex dynamics of GRNs according to biologically validated nonlinear models. However, it cannot be applied to ten or more genes to simultaneously estimate system dynamics and regulatory relationships due to the computational difficulties. The statistical model-based approach uses highly abstract models to simply describe biological systems and to infer relationships among several hundreds of genes from the data. However, the high abstraction generates false regulations that are not permitted biologically. Thus, when dealing with several tens of genes of which the relationships are partially known, a method that can infer regulatory relationships based on a model with low abstraction and that can emulate the dynamics of ODE-based models while incorporating prior knowledge is urgently required. To accomplish this, we propose a method for inference of GRNs using a state space representation of a vector auto-regressive (VAR) model with L1 regularization. This method can estimate the dynamic behavior of genes based on linear time-series modeling constructed from an ODE-based model and can infer the regulatory structure among several tens of genes maximizing prediction ability for the observational data. Furthermore, the method is capable of incorporating various types of existing biological knowledge, e.g., drug kinetics and literature-recorded pathways. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown through a comparison of simulation studies with several previous methods. For an application example, we evaluated mRNA expression profiles over time upon corticosteroid stimulation in rats, thus incorporating corticosteroid kinetics/dynamics, literature-recorded pathways and transcription factor (TF) information.

DNA damage repair is implicated in neurodegenerative diseases; however, the relative contributions of various DNA repair systems to the pathology of these diseases have not been investigated systematically. In this study, we performed a systematic in vivo screen of all available Drosophila melanogaster homolog DNA repair genes, and we tested the effect of their overexpression on lifespan and developmental viability in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 1 (SCA1) Drosophila models expressing human mutant Ataxin-1 (Atxn1). We identified genes previously unknown to be involved in CAG-/polyQ-related pathogenesis that function in multiple DNA damage repair systems. Beyond the significance of each repair system, systems biology analyses unraveled the core networks connecting positive genes in the gene screen that could contribute to SCA1 pathology. In particular, RpA1, which had the largest effect on lifespan in the SCA1 fly model, was located at the hub position linked to such core repair systems, including homologous recombination (HR). We revealed that Atxn1 actually interacted with RpA1 and its essential partners BRCA1/2. Furthermore, mutant but not normal Atxn1 impaired the dynamics of RpA1 in the nucleus after DNA damage. Uptake of BrdU by Purkinje cells was observed in mutant Atxn1 knockin mice, suggesting their abnormal entry to the S-phase. In addition, chemical and genetic inhibitions of Chk1 elongated lifespan and recovered eye degeneration. Collectively, we elucidated core networks for DNA damage repair in SCA1 that might include the aberrant usage of HR.

Background: Apoptosis is a critical process in endothelial cell (EC) biology and pathology, which has been extensively studied at protein level. Numerous gene expression studies of EC apoptosis have also been performed, however few attempts have been made to use gene expression data to identify the molecular relationships and master regulators that underlie EC apoptosis. Therefore, we sought to understand these relationships by generating a Bayesian gene regulatory network (GRN) model., Results: ECs were induced to undergo apoptosis using serum withdrawal and followed over a time course in triplicate, using microarrays. When generating the GRN, this EC time course data was supplemented by a library of microarray data from EC treated with siRNAs targeting over 350 signalling molecules.The GRN model proposed Vasohibin-1 (VASH1) as one of the candidate master-regulators of EC apoptosis with numerous downstream mRNAs. To evaluate the role played by VASH1 in EC, we used siRNA to reduce the expression of VASH1. Of 10 mRNAs downstream of VASH1 in the GRN that were examined, 7 were significantly up- or down-regulated in the direction predicted by the GRN.Further supporting an important biological role of VASH1 in EC, targeted reduction of VASH1 mRNA abundance conferred resistance to serum withdrawal-induced EC death., Conclusion: We have utilised Bayesian GRN modelling to identify a novel candidate master regulator of EC apoptosis. This study demonstrates how GRN technology can complement traditional methods to hypothesise the regulatory relationships that underlie important biological processes.

We propose a statistical method for uncovering gene pathways that characterize cancer heterogeneity. To incorporate knowledge of the pathways into the model, we define a set of activities of pathways from microarray gene expression data based on the Sparse Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis (SPPCA). A pathway activity logistic regression model is then formulated for cancer phenotype. To select pathway activities related to binary cancer phenotypes, we use the elastic net for the parameter estimation and derive a model selection criterion for selecting tuning parameters included in the model estimation. Our proposed method can also reverse-engineer gene networks based on the identified multiple pathways that enables us to discover novel gene-gene associations relating with the cancer phenotypes. We illustrate the whole process of the proposed method through the analysis of breast cancer gene expression data.

Gene regulatory networks inferred from RNA abundance data have generated significant interest, but despite this, gene network approaches are used infrequently and often require input from bioinformaticians. We have assembled a suite of tools for analysing regulatory networks, and we illustrate their use with microarray datasets generated in human endothelial cells. We infer a range of regulatory networks, and based on this analysis discuss the strengths and limitations of network inference from RNA abundance data. We welcome contact from researchers interested in using our inference and visualization tools to answer biological questions.

Background: TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor-α) induces HUVEC (Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells) to proliferate and form new blood vessels. This TNF-induced angiogenesis plays a key role in cancer and rheumatic disease. However, the molecular system that underlies TNF-induced angiogenesis is largely unknown., Methods: We analyzed the gene expression changes stimulated by TNF in HUVEC over a time course using microarrays to reveal the molecular system underlying TNF-induced angiogenesis. Traditional k-means clustering analysis was performed to identify informative temporal gene expression patterns buried in the time course data. Functional enrichment analysis using DAVID was then performed for each cluster. The genes that belonged to informative clusters were then used as the input for gene network analysis using a Bayesian network and nonparametric regression method. Based on this TNF-induced gene network, we searched for sub-networks related to angiogenesis by integrating existing biological knowledge., Results: k-means clustering of the TNF stimulated time course microarray gene expression data, followed by functional enrichment analysis identified three biologically informative clusters related to apoptosis, cellular proliferation and angiogenesis. These three clusters included 648 genes in total, which were used to estimate dynamic Bayesian networks. Based on the estimated TNF-induced gene networks, we hypothesized that a sub-network including IL6 and IL8 inhibits apoptosis and promotes TNF-induced angiogenesis. More particularly, IL6 promotes TNF-induced angiogenesis by inducing NF-κB and IL8, which are strong cell growth factors., Conclusions: Computational gene network analysis revealed a novel molecular system that may play an important role in the TNF-induced angiogenesis seen in cancer and rheumatic disease. This analysis suggests that Bayesian network analysis linked to functional annotation may be a powerful tool to provide insight into disease.

Background: In the analysis of effects by cell treatment such as drug dosing, identifying changes on gene network structures between normal and treated cells is a key task. A possible way for identifying the changes is to compare structures of networks estimated from data on normal and treated cells separately. However, this approach usually fails to estimate accurate gene networks due to the limited length of time series data and measurement noise. Thus, approaches that identify changes on regulations by using time series data on both conditions in an efficient manner are demanded., Methods: We propose a new statistical approach that is based on the state space representation of the vector autoregressive model and estimates gene networks on two different conditions in order to identify changes on regulations between the conditions. In the mathematical model of our approach, hidden binary variables are newly introduced to indicate the presence of regulations on each condition. The use of the hidden binary variables enables an efficient data usage; data on both conditions are used for commonly existing regulations, while for condition specific regulations corresponding data are only applied. Also, the similarity of networks on two conditions is automatically considered from the design of the potential function for the hidden binary variables. For the estimation of the hidden binary variables, we derive a new variational annealing method that searches the configuration of the binary variables maximizing the marginal likelihood., Results: For the performance evaluation, we use time series data from two topologically similar synthetic networks, and confirm that our proposed approach estimates commonly existing regulations as well as changes on regulations with higher coverage and precision than other existing approaches in almost all the experimental settings. For a real data application, our proposed approach is applied to time series data from normal Human lung cells and Human lung cells treated by stimulating EGF-receptors and dosing an anticancer drug termed Gefitinib. In the treated lung cells, a cancer cell condition is simulated by the stimulation of EGF-receptors, but the effect would be counteracted due to the selective inhibition of EGF-receptors by Gefitinib. However, gene expression profiles are actually different between the conditions, and the genes related to the identified changes are considered as possible off-targets of Gefitinib., Conclusions: From the synthetically generated time series data, our proposed approach can identify changes on regulations more accurately than existing methods. By applying the proposed approach to the time series data on normal and treated Human lung cells, candidates of off-target genes of Gefitinib are found. According to the published clinical information, one of the genes can be related to a factor of interstitial pneumonia, which is known as a side effect of Gefitinib.

Background: Our understanding of the molecular pathways that underlie melanoma remains incomplete. Although several published microarray studies of clinical melanomas have provided valuable information, we found only limited concordance between these studies. Therefore, we took an in vitro functional genomics approach to understand melanoma molecular pathways., Methodology/principal Findings: Affymetrix microarray data were generated from A375 melanoma cells treated in vitro with siRNAs against 45 transcription factors and signaling molecules. Analysis of this data using unsupervised hierarchical clustering and Bayesian gene networks identified proliferation-association RNA clusters, which were co-ordinately expressed across the A375 cells and also across melanomas from patients. The abundance in metastatic melanomas of these cellular proliferation clusters and their putative upstream regulators was significantly associated with patient prognosis. An 8-gene classifier derived from gene network hub genes correctly classified the prognosis of 23/26 metastatic melanoma patients in a cross-validation study. Unlike the RNA clusters associated with cellular proliferation described above, co-ordinately expressed RNA clusters associated with immune response were clearly identified across melanoma tumours from patients but not across the siRNA-treated A375 cells, in which immune responses are not active. Three uncharacterised genes, which the gene networks predicted to be upstream of apoptosis- or cellular proliferation-associated RNAs, were found to significantly alter apoptosis and cell number when over-expressed in vitro., Conclusions/significance: This analysis identified co-expression of RNAs that encode functionally-related proteins, in particular, proliferation-associated RNA clusters that are linked to melanoma patient prognosis. Our analysis suggests that A375 cells in vitro may be valid models in which to study the gene expression modules that underlie some melanoma biological processes (e.g., proliferation) but not others (e.g., immune response). The gene expression modules identified here, and the RNAs predicted by Bayesian network inference to be upstream of these modules, are potential prognostic biomarkers and drug targets.

We present a novel algorithm to estimate genome-wide gene networks consisting of more than 20,000 genes from gene expression data using nonparametric Bayesian networks. Due to the difficulty of learning Bayesian network structures, existing algorithms cannot be applied to more than a few thousand genes. Our algorithm overcomes this limitation by repeatedly estimating subnetworks in parallel for genes selected by neighbor node sampling. Through numerical simulation, we confirmed that our algorithm outperformed a heuristic algorithm in a shorter time. We applied our algorithm to microarray data from human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) treated with siRNAs, to construct a human genome-wide gene network, which we compared to a small gene network estimated for the genes extracted using a traditional bioinformatics method. The results showed that our genome-wide gene network contains many features of the small network, as well as others that could not be captured during the small network estimation. The results also revealed master-regulator genes that are not in the small network but that control many of the genes in the small network. These analyses were impossible to realize without our proposed algorithm.

Unlabelled: SiGN-SSM is an open-source gene network estimation software able to run in parallel on PCs and massively parallel supercomputers. The software estimates a state space model (SSM), that is a statistical dynamic model suitable for analyzing short time and/or replicated time series gene expression profiles. SiGN-SSM implements a novel parameter constraint effective to stabilize the estimated models. Also, by using a supercomputer, it is able to determine the gene network structure by a statistical permutation test in a practical time. SiGN-SSM is applicable not only to analyzing temporal regulatory dependencies between genes, but also to extracting the differentially regulated genes from time series expression profiles., Availability: SiGN-SSM is distributed under GNU Affero General Public Licence (GNU AGPL) version 3 and can be downloaded at http://sign.hgc.jp/signssm/. The pre-compiled binaries for some architectures are available in addition to the source code. The pre-installed binaries are also available on the Human Genome Center supercomputer system. The online manual and the supplementary information of SiGN-SSM is available on our web site., Contact: tamada@ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp.

Patient-specific analysis of molecular networks is a promising strategy for making individual risk predictions and treatment decisions in cancer therapy. Although systems biology allows the gene network of a cell to be reconstructed from clinical gene expression data, traditional methods, such as bayesian networks, only provide an averaged network for all samples. Therefore, these methods cannot reveal patient-specific differences in molecular networks during cancer progression. In this study, we developed a novel statistical method called NetworkProfiler, which infers patient-specific gene regulatory networks for a specific clinical characteristic, such as cancer progression, from gene expression data of cancer patients. We applied NetworkProfiler to microarray gene expression data from 762 cancer cell lines and extracted the system changes that were related to the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Out of 1732 possible regulators of E-cadherin, a cell adhesion molecule that modulates the EMT, NetworkProfiler, identified 25 candidate regulators, of which about half have been experimentally verified in the literature. In addition, we used NetworkProfiler to predict EMT-dependent master regulators that enhanced cell adhesion, migration, invasion, and metastasis. In order to further evaluate the performance of NetworkProfiler, we selected Krueppel-like factor 5 (KLF5) from a list of the remaining candidate regulators of E-cadherin and conducted in vitro validation experiments. As a result, we found that knockdown of KLF5 by siRNA significantly decreased E-cadherin expression and induced morphological changes characteristic of EMT. In addition, in vitro experiments of a novel candidate EMT-related microRNA, miR-100, confirmed the involvement of miR-100 in several EMT-related aspects, which was consistent with the predictions obtained by NetworkProfiler.

Our research group is currently developing software for estimating large-scale gene networks from gene expression data. The software, called SiGN, is specifically designed for the Japanese flagship supercomputer "K computer" which is planned to achieve 10 petaflops in 2012, and other high performance computing environments including Human Genome Center (HGC) supercomputer system. SiGN is a collection of gene network estimation software with three different sub-programs: SiGN-BN, SiGN-SSM and SiGN-L1. In these three programs, five different models are available: static and dynamic nonparametric Bayesian networks, state space models, graphical Gaussian models, and vector autoregressive models. All these models require a huge amount of computational resources for estimating large-scale gene networks and therefore are designed to be able to exploit the speed of 10 petaflops. The software will be available freely for "K computer" and HGC supercomputer system users. The estimated networks can be viewed and analyzed by Cell Illustrator Online and SBiP (Systems Biology integrative Pipeline). The software project web site is available at http://sign.hgc.jp/ .

Motivation: Elucidating the differences between cellular responses to various biological conditions or external stimuli is an important challenge in systems biology. Many approaches have been developed to reverse engineer a cellular system, called gene network, from time series microarray data in order to understand a transcriptomic response under a condition of interest. Comparative topological analysis has also been applied based on the gene networks inferred independently from each of the multiple time series datasets under varying conditions to find critical differences between these networks. However, these comparisons often lead to misleading results, because each network contains considerable noise due to the limited length of the time series., Results: We propose an integrated approach for inferring multiple gene networks from time series expression data under varying conditions. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first reverse-engineering method that is intended for transcriptomic network comparison between varying conditions. Furthermore, we propose a state-of-the-art parameter estimation method, relevance-weighted recursive elastic net, for providing higher precision and recall than existing reverse-engineering methods. We analyze experimental data of MCF-7 human breast cancer cells stimulated by epidermal growth factor or heregulin with several doses and provide novel biological hypotheses through network comparison., Availability: The software NETCOMP is available at http://bonsai.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ approximately shima/NETCOMP/.

Although microarray technology has revealed transcriptomic diversities underlining various cancer phenotypes, transcriptional programs controlling them have not been well elucidated. To decode transcriptional programs governing cancer transcriptomes, we have recently developed a computational method termed EEM, which searches for expression modules from prescribed gene sets defined by prior biological knowledge like TF binding motifs. In this paper, we extend our EEM approach to predict cancer transcriptional networks. Starting from functional TF binding motifs and expression modules identified by EEM, we predict cancer transcriptional networks containing regulatory TFs, associated GO terms, and interactions between TF binding motifs. To systematically analyze transcriptional programs in broad types of cancer, we applied our EEM-based network prediction method to 122 microarray datasets collected from public databases. The data sets contain about 15000 experiments for tumor samples of various tissue origins including breast, colon, lung etc. This EEM based meta-analysis successfully revealed a prevailing cancer transcriptional network which functions in a large fraction of cancer transcriptomes; they include cell-cycle and immune related sub-networks. This study demonstrates broad applicability of EEM, and opens a way to comprehensive understanding of transcriptional networks in cancer cells.

We propose a state space representation of vector autoregressive model and its sparse learning based on L1 regularization to achieve efficient estimation of dynamic gene networks based on time course microarray data. The proposed method can overcome drawbacks of the vector autoregressive model and state space model; the assumption of equal time interval and lack of separation ability of observation and systems noises in the former method and the assumption of modularity of network structure in the latter method. However, in a simple implementation the proposed model requires the calculation of large inverse matrices in a large number of times during parameter estimation process based on EM algorithm. This limits the applicability of the proposed method to a relatively small gene set. We thus introduce a new calculation technique for EM algorithm that does not require the calculation of inverse matrices. The proposed method is applied to time course microarray data of lung cells treated by stimulating EGF receptors and dosing an anticancer drug, Gefitinib. By comparing the estimated network with the control network estimated using non-treated lung cells, perturbed genes by the anticancer drug could be found, whose up- and down-stream genes in the estimated networks may be related to side effects of the anticancer drug.

One of the open problems in systems biology is to infer dynamic gene networks describing the underlying biological process with mathematical, statistical and computational methods. The first-order difference equation-based models such as dynamic Bayesian networks and vector autoregressive models were used to infer time-lagged relationships between genes from time-series microarray data. However, two primary problems greatly reduce the effectiveness of current approaches. The first problem is the tacit assumption that time lag is stationary. The second is the inseparability between measurement noise and process noise (unmeasured disturbances that pass through time process). To address these problems, we propose a stochastic differential equation model for inferring continuous-time dynamic gene networks under the situation in which both of the process noise and the observation noise exist. We present a collocation-based sparse estimation for simultaneous parameter estimation and model selection in the model. The collocation-based approach requires considerably less computational effort than traditional methods in ordinary stochastic differential equation models. We also incorporate various biological knowledge easily to refine the estimation accuracy with the proposed method. The results using simulated data and real time-series expression data of human primary small airway epithelial cells demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms competing approaches and can provide significant genes influenced by gefitinib.

We propose a statistical model realizing simultaneous estimation of gene regulatory network and gene module identification from time series gene expression data from microarray experiments. Under the assumption that genes in the same module are densely connected, the proposed method detects gene modules based on the variational Bayesian technique. The model can also incorporate existing biological prior knowledge such as protein subcellular localization. We apply the proposed model to the time series data from a synthetically generated network and verified the effectiveness of the proposed model. The proposed model is also applied the time series microarray data from HeLa cell. Detected gene module information gives the great help on drawing the estimated gene network.

Background: Inferring gene networks from time-course microarray experiments with vector autoregressive (VAR) model is the process of identifying functional associations between genes through multivariate time series. This problem can be cast as a variable selection problem in Statistics. One of the promising methods for variable selection is the elastic net proposed by Zou and Hastie (2005). However, VAR modeling with the elastic net succeeds in increasing the number of true positives while it also results in increasing the number of false positives., Results: By incorporating relative importance of the VAR coefficients into the elastic net, we propose a new class of regularization, called recursive elastic net, to increase the capability of the elastic net and estimate gene networks based on the VAR model. The recursive elastic net can reduce the number of false positives gradually by updating the importance. Numerical simulations and comparisons demonstrate that the proposed method succeeds in reducing the number of false positives drastically while keeping the high number of true positives in the network inference and achieves two or more times higher true discovery rate (the proportion of true positives among the selected edges) than the competing methods even when the number of time points is small. We also compared our method with various reverse-engineering algorithms on experimental data of MCF-7 breast cancer cells stimulated with two ErbB ligands, EGF and HRG., Conclusion: The recursive elastic net is a powerful tool for inferring gene networks from time-course gene expression profiles.

We propose a statistical method based on graphical Gaussian models for estimating large gene networks from DNA microarray data. In estimating large gene networks, the number of genes is larger than the number of samples, we need to consider some restrictions for model building. We propose weighted lasso estimation for the graphical Gaussian models as a model of large gene networks. In the proposed method, the structural learning for gene networks is equivalent to the selection of the regularization parameters included in the weighted lasso estimation. We investigate this problem from a Bayes approach and derive an empirical Bayesian information criterion for choosing them. Unlike Bayesian network approach, our method can find the optimal network structure and does not require to use heuristic structural learning algorithm. We conduct Monte Carlo simulation to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. We also analyze Arabidopsis thaliana microarray data and estimate gene networks.

Understanding responses of the cellular system for a dosing molecule is one of the most important problems in pharmacogenomics. In this chapter, we describe computational methods for identifying and validating drug target genes based on the gene networks estimated from microarray gene expression data. We use two types of microarray gene expression data: gene disruptant microarray data and time-course drug response microarray data. For this purpose, the information of gene networks plays an essential role and is unattainable from clustering methods, which are the standard for gene expression analysis. The gene network is estimated from disruptant microarray data by the Bayesian network model, and then the proposed method automatically identifies sets of genes or gene regulatory pathways affected by the drug. We use an actual example from analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene expression profile data to express a concrete strategy for the application of gene network information toward drug target discovery.

Biological condition-responsive gene network analysis has attracted considerable research attention because of its ability to identify pathways or gene modules involved in the underlying mechanisms of diseases. Although many condition-specific gene network identification methods have been developed, they are based on partial or incomplete gene regulatory network information, with most studies only considering the differential expression levels or correlations among genes. However, a single gene-based analysis cannot effectively identify the molecular interactions involved in the mechanisms underlying diseases, which reflect perturbations in specific molecular network functions rather than disorders of a single gene. To comprehensively identify differentially regulated gene networks, we propose a novel computational strategy called comprehensive analysis of differential gene regulatory networks (CIdrgn). Our strategy incorporates comprehensive information on the networks between genes, including the expression levels, edge structures and regulatory effects, to measure the dissimilarity among networks. We extended the proposed CIdrgn to cell line characteristic-specific gene network analysis. Monte Carlo simulations showed the effectiveness of CIdrgn for identifying differentially regulated gene networks with different network structures and scales. Moreover, condition-responsive network identification in cell line characteristic-specific gene network analyses was verified. We applied CIdrgn to identify gastric cancer and itsf chemotherapy (capecitabine and oxaliplatin) -responsive network based on the Cancer Dependency Map. The CXC family of chemokines and cadherin gene family networks were identified as gastric cancer-specific gene regulatory networks, which was verified through a literature survey. The networks of the olfactory receptor family with the ASCL1/FOS family were identified as capecitabine- and oxaliplatin sensitive -specific gene networks. We expect that the proposed CIdrgn method will be a useful tool for identifying crucial molecular interactions involved in the specific biological conditions of cancer cell lines, such as the cancer stage or acquired anticancer drug resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex mechanisms of diseases involve the disturbance of the molecular network, rather than disorder in a single gene, implying that single gene-based analysis is insufficient to understand these mechanisms. Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) have attracted a lot of interest and various approaches have been developed for their statistical inference and gene network-based analysis. Although various computational methods have been developed, relatively little attention has been paid to incorporation of biological knowledge into the computational approaches. Furthermore, existing studies on network-based analysis perform prediction/classification of status of cell lines based on preconstructed GRNs, implying that we cannot extract prediction/classification-specific gene networks, leading to difficulty in interpretation of biological mechanisms and marker identification related to the status of cancer cell lines. We developed a novel strategy to build a GRN-based classifier, called a GRN-classifier. The proposed GRN-classifier estimates GRNs and classifies cell lines simultaneously, where the gene network is estimated to minimize error in gene network estimation and the negative log-likelihood for classifying cell lines. Thus, we can identify biological status-specific gene regulatory systems, enabling us to achieve biologically reliable interpretation of the classification. We also propose an algorithm to implement the GRN-classifier based on coordinate descent update. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to examine performance of the GRN-classifier. Results: Our strategy provides effective results in feature selection in the classification model and edge selection in gene network estimation. The GRN-classifier also shows outstanding classification accuracy. We apply the GRN-classifier to classify cancer cell lines into anticancer drug-related status, that is, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-sensitive/resistant and 5-FU target/nontarget cancer cell lines. We then identified 5-FU markers based on 5-FU-related status classification-specific gene networks. The mechanisms of the identified markers were verified through literature survey. Our results suggest that the molecular interplay between MYOF and AHNAK2 may play a crucial role in drug resistance and can provide information on the chemotherapy efficiency of 5-FU. It is also suggested that suppression of the identified 5-FU markers, including MYOF/AHNAK2 and AKR1C1/AKR1C3 may improve 5-FU resistance of cancer cell lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gene expression, DNA methylation, and their organizational relationships are commonly altered in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). To elucidate these complex interactions, we reconstructed a differentially expressed gene network and a differentially methylated cytosine (DMC) network by partial information decomposition and an inverse correlation algorithm, respectively. Then, we performed graph union to integrate the networks. Community detection and enrichment analysis of the integrated network revealed close interactions between the cell cycle, keratinization, immune system, and xenobiotic metabolism gene sets in LUSC. DMC analysis showed that hypomethylation targeted the gene sets responsible for cell cycle, keratinization, and NRF2 pathways. On the other hand, hypermethylated genes affected circulatory system development, the immune system, extracellular matrix organization, and cilium organization. By centrality measurement, we identified NCAPG2, PSMG3, and FADD as hub genes that were highly connected to other nodes and might play important roles in LUSC gene dysregulation. We also found that the genes with high betweenness centrality are more likely to affect patients' survival than those with low betweenness centrality. These results showed that the integrated network analysis enabled us to obtain a global view of the interactions and regulations in LUSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gene regulatory networks have garnered a large amount of attention to understand disease mechanisms caused by complex molecular network interactions. These networks have been applied to predict specific clinical characteristics, e.g., cancer, pathogenicity, and anti-cancer drug sensitivity. However, in most previous studies using network-based prediction, the gene networks were estimated first, and predicted clinical characteristics based on pre-estimated networks. Thus, the estimated networks cannot describe clinical characteristic-specific gene regulatory systems. Furthermore, existing computational methods were developed from algorithmic and mathematics viewpoints, without considering network biology. Results: To effectively predict clinical characteristics and estimate gene networks that provide critical insights into understanding the biological mechanisms involved in a clinical characteristic, we propose a novel strategy for predictive gene network estimation. The proposed strategy simultaneously performs gene network estimation and prediction of the clinical characteristic. In this strategy, the gene network is estimated with minimal network estimation and prediction errors. We incorporate network biology by assuming that neighboring genes in a network have similar biological functions, while hub genes play key roles in biological processes. Thus, the proposed method provides interpretable prediction results and enables us to uncover biologically reliable marker identification. Monte Carlo simulations shows the effectiveness of our method for feature selection in gene estimation and prediction with excellent prediction accuracy. We applied the proposed strategy to construct gastric cancer drug-responsive networks. Conclusion: We identified gastric drug response predictive markers and drug sensitivity/resistance-specific markers, AKR1B10, AKR1C3, ANXA10, and ZNF165, based on GDSC data analysis. Our results for identifying drug sensitive and resistant specific molecular interplay are strongly supported by previous studies. We expect that the proposed strategy will be a useful tool for uncovering crucial molecular interactions involved a specific biological mechanism, such as cancer progression or acquired drug resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive understanding of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) is a major challenge in the field of systems biology. Currently, there are two main approaches in GRN analysis using time-course observation data, namely an ordinary differential equation (ODE)-based approach and a statistical model-based approach. The ODE-based approach can generate complex dynamics of GRNs according to biologically validated nonlinear models. However, it cannot be applied to ten or more genes to simultaneously estimate system dynamics and regulatory relationships due to the computational difficulties. The statistical model-based approach uses highly abstract models to simply describe biological systems and to infer relationships among several hundreds of genes from the data. However, the high abstraction generates false regulations that are not permitted biologically. Thus, when dealing with several tens of genes of which the relationships are partially known, a method that can infer regulatory relationships based on a model with low abstraction and that can emulate the dynamics of ODE-based models while incorporating prior knowledge is urgently required. To accomplish this, we propose a method for inference of GRNs using a state space representation of a vector auto-regressive (VAR) model with L1 regularization. This method can estimate the dynamic behavior of genes based on linear time-series modeling constructed from an ODE-based model and can infer the regulatory structure among several tens of genes maximizing prediction ability for the observational data. Furthermore, the method is capable of incorporating various types of existing biological knowledge, e.g., drug kinetics and literature-recorded pathways. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown through a comparison of simulation studies with several previous methods. For an application example, we evaluated mRNA expression profiles over time upon corticosteroid stimulation in rats, thus incorporating corticosteroid kinetics/dynamics, literature-recorded pathways and transcription factor (TF) information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncovering mechanisms of acquired drug resistance has garnered increasing attention worldwide as drug resistance reduces antibiotic and chemotherapy effectiveness. Most bioinformatics studies have elucidated these mechanisms based on differentially expressed gene (DEG) analysis. However, considering the associated complex network of biological systems, the specific molecular interactions must also be studied to obtain a complete understanding of the mechanisms related to drug resistance. Accordingly, by analyzing sample-specific gene networks, we sought to elucidate mechanisms of acquired drug resistance of cells based on molecular interactions between genes. In the current study, we focus on gefitinib and erlotinib and characterized cell lines based on their sensitivity. We also consider CRISPR knockout screening of the target gene, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), as a characteristic of cells. Subsequently, we constructed a drug sensitivity-CRISPR knockout screen-specific gene network. To identify the molecular mechanisms of drug resistance from the multiple large-scale networks, we proposed a novel computational method, designated network-constrained sparse common component analysis (NetSCCA), that extracts common structures of multiple networks characterizing molecular interaction in drug-sensitive and drug-resistant cell lines. We then applied NetSCCA to multilayer networks of candidate drug-response genes to identify common structures of the regulatory system in drug-sensitive and EGFR-dependent cells, and drug-resistant and EGFR-independent cells. NetSCCA identified crucial common targets and regulator genes that dominate multiple networks in drug-sensitive and drug-resistant cell lines, respectively. Our analysis for common structure identification based on NetSCCA has the capacity to characterize the molecular interplay between genes and crucial markers related to mechanisms of acquired drug resistance that cannot be revealed by analysis based solely on DEG analysis. The biological mechanisms associated with gefitinib and erlotinib sensitivity of identified genes were verified through the literature. We expect that the proposed method will serve as a useful tool for uncovering not only drug resistance mechanisms but also complex biological systems based on massive genomic data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]