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Abstract The search for effective therapeutic targets in fields like regenerative medicine and cancer research has generated interest in cell fate reprogramming. This cellular reprogramming paradigm can drive cells to a desired target state from any initial state. However, methods for identifying reprogramming targets remain limited for biological systems that lack large sets of experimental data or a dynamical characterization. We present NETISCE, a novel computational tool for identifying cell fate reprogramming targets in static networks. In combination with machine learning algorithms, NETISCE estimates the attractor landscape and predicts reprogramming targets using signal flow analysis and feedback vertex set control, respectively. Through validations in studies of cell fate reprogramming from developmental, stem cell, and cancer biology, we show that NETISCE can predict previously identified cell fate reprogramming targets and identify potentially novel combinations of targets. NETISCE extends cell fate reprogramming studies to larger-scale biological networks without the need for full model parameterization and can be implemented by experimental and computational biologists to identify parts of a biological system relevant to the desired reprogramming task.

Abstract Background Macrophages play prominent roles in bacteria recognition and clearance, including Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the Lyme disease spirochete. To elucidate mechanisms by which MyD88/TLR signaling enhances clearance of Bb by macrophages, we studied wildtype (WT) and MyD88−/− Bb-stimulated bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs). Results MyD88−/− BMDMs exhibit impaired uptake of spirochetes but comparable maturation of phagosomes following internalization of spirochetes. RNA-sequencing of infected WT and MyD88−/− BMDMs identified a large cohort of differentially expressed MyD88-dependent genes associated with re-organization of actin and cytoskeleton during phagocytosis along with several MyD88-independent chemokines involved in inflammatory cell recruitment. We computationally generated networks which identified several MyD88-dependent intermediate proteins (Rhoq and Cyfip1) that are known to mediate inflammation and phagocytosis respectively. Conclusion Our findings show that MyD88 signaling enhances, but is not required, for bacterial uptake or phagosomal maturation and provide mechanistic insights into how MyD88-mediated phagosomal signaling enhances Bb uptake and clearance.

This article describes a mathematical biology workshop given to secondary school teachers of the Danville area in Virginia, USA. The goal of the workshop was to enable teams of teachers with biology and mathematics expertise to incorporate lesson plans in mathematical modelling into the curriculum. The biological focus of the activities is the lactose operon in "Escherichia coli," one of the first known intracellular regulatory networks. The modelling approach utilizes Boolean networks and tools from discrete mathematics for model simulation and analysis. The workshop structure simulated the team science approach common in today's practice in computational molecular biology and thus represents a social case study in collaborative research. The workshop provided all the necessary background in molecular biology and discrete mathematics required to complete the project. The activities developed in the workshop show students the value of mathematical modelling in understanding biochemical network mechanisms and dynamics. The use of Boolean networks, rather than the more common systems of differential equations, makes the material accessible to students with a minimal mathematical background. High school students can be exposed to the excitement of mathematical biology from both the biological and mathematical point of view. Through the development of instructional modules, high school biology and mathematics courses can be joined without having to restructure the curriculum for either subject. The relevance of an early introduction to mathematical biology allows students not only to learn curriculum material in a innovative setting, but also creates an awareness of new educational and career opportunities that are arising from the interconnections between biological and mathematical sciences.

UnlabelledRecent studies of the human genome have indicated that regulatory elements (e.g. promoters and enhancers) at distal genomic locations can interact with each other via chromatin folding and affect gene expression levels. Genomic technologies for mapping interactions between DNA regions, e.g., ChIA-PET and HiC, can generate genome-wide maps of interactions between regulatory elements. These interaction datasets are important resources to infer distal gene targets of non-coding regulatory elements and to facilitate prioritization of critical loci for important cellular functions. With the increasing diversity and complexity of genomic information and public ontologies, making sense of these datasets demands integrative and easy-to-use software tools. Moreover, network representation of chromatin interaction maps enables effective data visualization, integration, and mining. Currently, there is no software that can take full advantage of network theory approaches for the analysis of chromatin interaction datasets. To fill this gap, we developed a web-based application, QuIN, which enables: 1) building and visualizing chromatin interaction networks, 2) annotating networks with user-provided private and publicly available functional genomics and interaction datasets, 3) querying network components based on gene name or chromosome location, and 4) utilizing network based measures to identify and prioritize critical regulatory targets and their direct and indirect interactions.AvailabilityQuIN's web server is available at http://quin.jax.org QuIN is developed in Java and JavaScript, utilizing an Apache Tomcat web server and MySQL database and the source code is available under the GPLV3 license available on GitHub: https://github.com/UcarLab/QuIN/.

Hypoxia is one of the key factors in the tumor microenvironment regulating nearly all steps in the metastatic cascade in many cancers, including in breast cancer. The hypoxic regions can however be dynamic with the availability of oxygen fluctuating or oscillating. The canonical response to hypoxia is relayed by transcription factor Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1 (HIF-1), which is stabilized in hypoxia and acts as the master regulator of a large number of downstream genes. However, HIF-1 transcriptional activity can also fluctuate either due to unstable hypoxia, or by lactate mediated noncanonical degradation of HIF-1. Our understanding of how oscillatory hypoxia or HIF-1 activity specifically influences cancer malignancy is very limited. Here, using MDA-MB-231 cells as a model of triple negative breast cancer characterized by severe hypoxia, we measured the gene expression changes induced specifically by oscillatory hypoxia. We found that oscillatory hypoxia can specifically regulate gene expression differently, and at times opposite to stable hypoxia. Using the Cancer Genome Atlas RNAseq data of human cancer samples, we show that the oscillatory specific gene expression signature in MDA-MB-231 is enriched in most human cancers, and prognosticates low survival in breast cancer patients. In particular, we found that oscillatory hypoxia, unlike stable hypoxia, induces unfolded protein folding response in cells resulting in gene expression predicting reduced survival., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Hypoxia is one of the key factors in the tumor microenvironment regulating nearly all steps in the metastatic cascade in many cancers, including in breast cancer. The hypoxic regions can however be dynamic with the availability of oxygen fluctuating or oscillating. The canonical response to hypoxia is relayed by transcription factor HIF-1, which is stabilized in hypoxia and acts as the master regulator of a large number of downstream genes. However, HIF-1 transcriptional activity can also fluctuate either due to unstable hypoxia, or by lactate mediated non-canonical degradation of HIF-1. Our understanding of how oscillatory hypoxia or HIF-1 activity specifically influence cancer malignancy is very limited. Here, using MDA-MB-231 cells as a model of triple negative breast cancer characterized by severe hypoxia, we measured the gene expression changes induced specifically by oscillatory hypoxia. We found that oscillatory hypoxia can specifically regulate gene expression differently, and at times opposite to stable hypoxia. Using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) RNAseq data of human cancer samples, we show that the oscillatory specific gene expression signature in MDA-MB-231 is enriched in most human cancers, and prognosticate low survival in breast cancer patients. In particular, we found that oscillatory hypoxia, unlike stable hypoxia, induces unfolded protein folding response (UPR) in cells resulting in gene expression predicting reduced survival.

Summary: OCSANA+ is a Cytoscape app for identifying nodes to drive the system toward a desired long-term behavior, prioritizing combinations of interventions in large-scale complex networks, and estimating the effects of node perturbations in signaling networks, all based on the analysis of the network's structure. OCSANA+ includes an update to optimal combinations of interventions from network analysis software tool with cutting-edge and rigorously tested algorithms, together with recently developed structure-based control algorithms for non-linear systems and an algorithm for estimating signal flow. All these algorithms are based on the network's topology. OCSANA+ is implemented as a Cytoscape app to enable a user interface for running analyses and visualizing results., Availability and Implementation: OCSANA+ app and its tutorial can be downloaded from the Cytoscape App Store or https://veraliconaresearchgroup.github.io/OCSANA-Plus/. The source code and computations are available in https://github.com/VeraLiconaResearchGroup/OCSANA-Plus_SourceCode., Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Tissue-resident macrophages are a diverse population of cells that perform specialized functions including sustaining tissue homeostasis and tissue surveillance. Here, we report an interstitial subset of CD169 + lung-resident macrophages that are transcriptionally and developmentally distinct from alveolar macrophages (AMs). They are primarily localized around the airways and are found in close proximity to the sympathetic nerves in the bronchovascular bundle. These nerve- and airway-associated macrophages (NAMs) are tissue resident, yolk sac derived, self-renewing, and do not require CCR2 + monocytes for development or maintenance. Unlike AMs, the development of NAMs requires CSF1 but not GM-CSF. Bulk population and single-cell transcriptome analysis indicated that NAMs are distinct from other lung-resident macrophage subsets and highly express immunoregulatory genes under steady-state and inflammatory conditions. NAMs proliferated robustly after influenza infection and activation with the TLR3 ligand poly(I:C), and in their absence, the inflammatory response was augmented, resulting in excessive production of inflammatory cytokines and innate immune cell infiltration. Overall, our study provides insights into a distinct subset of airway-associated pulmonary macrophages that function to maintain immune and tissue homeostasis., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.)

Summary: The rapid development in quantitatively measuring DNA, RNA and protein has generated a great interest in the development of reverse-engineering methods, that is, data-driven approaches to infer the network structure or dynamical model of the system. Many reverse-engineering methods require discrete quantitative data as input, while many experimental data are continuous. Some studies have started to reveal the impact that the choice of data discretization has on the performance of reverse-engineering methods. However, more comprehensive studies are still greatly needed to systematically and quantitatively understand the impact that discretization methods have on inference methods. Furthermore, there is an urgent need for systematic comparative methods that can help select between discretization methods. In this work, we consider four published intracellular networks inferred with their respective time-series datasets. We discretized the data using different discretization methods. Across all datasets, changing the data discretization to a more appropriate one improved the reverse-engineering methods' performance. We observed no universal best discretization method across different time-series datasets. Thus, we propose DiscreeTest, a two-step evaluation metric for ranking discretization methods for time-series data. The underlying assumption of DiscreeTest is that an optimal discretization method should preserve the dynamic patterns observed in the original data across all variables. We used the same datasets and networks to show that DiscreeTest is able to identify an appropriate discretization among several candidate methods. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a method for benchmarking and selecting an appropriate discretization method for time-series data has been proposed., Availability and Implementation: All the datasets, reverse-engineering methods and source code used in this paper are available in Vera-Licona's lab Github repository: https://github.com/VeraLiconaResearchGroup/Benchmarking_TSDiscretizations., Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Broad domain promoters and super enhancers are regulatory elements that govern cell-specific functions and harbor disease-associated sequence variants. These elements are characterized by distinct epigenomic profiles, such as expanded deposition of histone marks H3K27ac for super enhancers and H3K4me3 for broad domains, however little is known about how they interact with each other and the rest of the genome in three-dimensional chromatin space. Using network theory methods, we studied chromatin interactions between broad domains and super enhancers in three ENCODE cell lines (K562, MCF7, GM12878) obtained via ChIA-PET, Hi-C, and Hi-CHIP assays. In these networks, broad domains and super enhancers interact more frequently with each other compared to their typical counterparts. Network measures and graphlets revealed distinct connectivity patterns associated with these regulatory elements that are robust across cell types and alternative assays. Machine learning models showed that these connectivity patterns could effectively discriminate broad domains from typical promoters and super enhancers from typical enhancers. Finally, targets of broad domains in these networks were enriched in disease-causing SNPs of cognate cell types. Taken together these results suggest a robust and unique organization of the chromatin around broad domains and super enhancers: loci critical for pathologies and cell-specific functions.

The spleen is an important site for generating protective immune responses against pathogens. After infection, immune cells undergo rapid reorganization to initiate and maintain localized inflammatory responses; however, the mechanisms governing this spatial and temporal cellular reorganization remain unclear. We show that the strategic position of splenic marginal zone CD169 + macrophages is vital for rapid initiation of antibacterial responses. In addition to controlling initial bacterial growth, CD169 + macrophages orchestrate a second phase of innate protection by mediating the transport of bacteria to splenic T cell zones. This compartmentalization of bacteria within the spleen was essential for driving the reorganization of innate immune cells into hierarchical clusters and for local interferon-γ production near sites of bacterial replication foci. Our results show that both phases of the antimicrobial innate immune response were dependent on CD169 + macrophages, and, in their absence, the series of events needed for pathogen clearance and subsequent survival of the host was disrupted. Our study provides insight into how lymphoid organ structure and function are related at a fundamental level., (Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.)

Motivation: There is a growing need in bioinformatics for easy-to-use software implementations of algorithms that are usable across platforms. At the same time, reproducibility of computational results is critical and often a challenge due to source code changes over time and dependencies., Results: The approach introduced in this paper addresses both of these needs with AlgoRun, a dedicated packaging system for implemented algorithms, using Docker technology. Implemented algorithms, packaged with AlgoRun, can be executed through a user-friendly interface directly from a web browser or via a standardized RESTful web API to allow easy integration into more complex workflows. The packaged algorithm includes the entire software execution environment, thereby eliminating the common problem of software dependencies and the irreproducibility of computations over time. AlgoRun-packaged algorithms can be published on http://algorun.org, a centralized searchable directory to find existing AlgoRun-packaged algorithms., Availability and Implementation: AlgoRun is available at http://algorun.org and the source code under GPL license is available at https://github.com/algorun, Contact: laubenbacher@uchc.edu, Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online., (© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Unlabelled: Recent studies of the human genome have indicated that regulatory elements (e.g. promoters and enhancers) at distal genomic locations can interact with each other via chromatin folding and affect gene expression levels. Genomic technologies for mapping interactions between DNA regions, e.g., ChIA-PET and HiC, can generate genome-wide maps of interactions between regulatory elements. These interaction datasets are important resources to infer distal gene targets of non-coding regulatory elements and to facilitate prioritization of critical loci for important cellular functions. With the increasing diversity and complexity of genomic information and public ontologies, making sense of these datasets demands integrative and easy-to-use software tools. Moreover, network representation of chromatin interaction maps enables effective data visualization, integration, and mining. Currently, there is no software that can take full advantage of network theory approaches for the analysis of chromatin interaction datasets. To fill this gap, we developed a web-based application, QuIN, which enables: 1) building and visualizing chromatin interaction networks, 2) annotating networks with user-provided private and publicly available functional genomics and interaction datasets, 3) querying network components based on gene name or chromosome location, and 4) utilizing network based measures to identify and prioritize critical regulatory targets and their direct and indirect interactions., Availability: QuIN's web server is available at http://quin.jax.org QuIN is developed in Java and JavaScript, utilizing an Apache Tomcat web server and MySQL database and the source code is available under the GPLV3 license available on GitHub: https://github.com/UcarLab/QuIN/.

Background: The inference of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) from experimental observations is at the heart of systems biology. This includes the inference of both the network topology and its dynamics. While there are many algorithms available to infer the network topology from experimental data, less emphasis has been placed on methods that infer network dynamics. Furthermore, since the network inference problem is typically underdetermined, it is essential to have the option of incorporating into the inference process, prior knowledge about the network, along with an effective description of the search space of dynamic models. Finally, it is also important to have an understanding of how a given inference method is affected by experimental and other noise in the data used., Results: This paper contains a novel inference algorithm using the algebraic framework of Boolean polynomial dynamical systems (BPDS), meeting all these requirements. The algorithm takes as input time series data, including those from network perturbations, such as knock-out mutant strains and RNAi experiments. It allows for the incorporation of prior biological knowledge while being robust to significant levels of noise in the data used for inference. It uses an evolutionary algorithm for local optimization with an encoding of the mathematical models as BPDS. The BPDS framework allows an effective representation of the search space for algebraic dynamic models that improves computational performance. The algorithm is validated with both simulated and experimental microarray expression profile data. Robustness to noise is tested using a published mathematical model of the segment polarity gene network in Drosophila melanogaster. Benchmarking of the algorithm is done by comparison with a spectrum of state-of-the-art network inference methods on data from the synthetic IRMA network to demonstrate that our method has good precision and recall for the network reconstruction task, while also predicting several of the dynamic patterns present in the network., Conclusions: Boolean polynomial dynamical systems provide a powerful modeling framework for the reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks, that enables a rich mathematical structure on the model search space. A C++ implementation of the method, distributed under LPGL license, is available, together with the source code, at http://www.paola-vera-licona.net/Software/EARevEng/REACT.html.

Unlabelled: Targeted therapies interfering with specifically one protein activity are promising strategies in the treatment of diseases like cancer. However, accumulated empirical experience has shown that targeting multiple proteins in signaling networks involved in the disease is often necessary. Thus, one important problem in biomedical research is the design and prioritization of optimal combinations of interventions to repress a pathological behavior, while minimizing side-effects. OCSANA (optimal combinations of interventions from network analysis) is a new software designed to identify and prioritize optimal and minimal combinations of interventions to disrupt the paths between source nodes and target nodes. When specified by the user, OCSANA seeks to additionally minimize the side effects that a combination of interventions can cause on specified off-target nodes. With the crucial ability to cope with very large networks, OCSANA includes an exact solution and a novel selective enumeration approach for the combinatorial interventions' problem., Availability: The latest version of OCSANA, implemented as a plugin for Cytoscape and distributed under LGPL license, is available together with source code at http://bioinfo.curie.fr/projects/ocsana.

Background: Inferring the structure of gene regulatory networks (GRN) from a collection of gene expression data has many potential applications, from the elucidation of complex biological processes to the identification of potential drug targets. It is however a notoriously difficult problem, for which the many existing methods reach limited accuracy., Results: In this paper, we formulate GRN inference as a sparse regression problem and investigate the performance of a popular feature selection method, least angle regression (LARS) combined with stability selection, for that purpose. We introduce a novel, robust and accurate scoring technique for stability selection, which improves the performance of feature selection with LARS. The resulting method, which we call TIGRESS (for Trustful Inference of Gene REgulation with Stability Selection), was ranked among the top GRN inference methods in the DREAM5 gene network inference challenge. In particular, TIGRESS was evaluated to be the best linear regression-based method in the challenge. We investigate in depth the influence of the various parameters of the method, and show that a fine parameter tuning can lead to significant improvements and state-of-the-art performance for GRN inference, in both directed and undirected settings., Conclusions: TIGRESS reaches state-of-the-art performance on benchmark data, including both in silico and in vivo (E. coli and S. cerevisiae) networks. This study confirms the potential of feature selection techniques for GRN inference. Code and data are available on http://cbio.ensmp.fr/tigress. Moreover, TIGRESS can be run online through the GenePattern platform (GP-DREAM, http://dream.broadinstitute.org).

The reverse engineering of biochemical networks is a central problem in systems biology. In recent years several methods have been developed for this purpose, using techniques from a variety of fields. A systematic comparison of the different methods is complicated by their widely varying data requirements, making benchmarking difficult. Also, because of the lack of detailed knowledge about most real networks, it is not easy to use experimental data for this purpose. This paper contains a comparison of four reverse-engineering methods using data from a simulated network. The network is sufficiently realistic and complex to include many of the challenges that data from real networks pose. Our results indicate that the two methods based on genetic perturbations of the network outperform the other methods, including dynamic Bayesian networks and a partial correlation method.