Network-based approaches to explore complex biological systems towards network medicine

Network medicine relies on different types of networks: from the molecular level of protein–protein interactions to gene regulatory network and correlation studies of gene expression. Among network approaches based on the analysis of the topological properties of protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks, we discuss the widespread DIAMOnD (disease module detection) algorithm. Starting from the assumption that PPI networks can be viewed as maps where diseases can be identified with localized perturbation within a specific neighborhood (i.e., disease modules), DIAMOnD performs a systematic analysis of the human PPI network to uncover new disease-associated genes by exploiting the connectivity significance instead of connection density. The past few years have witnessed the increasing interest in understanding the molecular mechanism of post-transcriptional regulation with a special emphasis on non-coding RNAs since they are emerging as key regulators of many cellular processes in both physiological and pathological states. Recent findings show that coding genes are not the only targets that microRNAs interact with. In fact, there is a pool of different RNAs—including long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) —competing with each other to attract microRNAs for interactions, thus acting as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs). The framework of regulatory networks provides a powerful tool to gather new insights into ceRNA regulatory mechanisms. Here, we describe a data-driven model recently developed to explore the lncRNA-associated ceRNA activity in breast invasive carcinoma. On the other hand, a very promising example of the co-expression network is the one implemented by the software SWIM (switch miner), which combines topological properties of correlation networks with gene expression data in order to identify a small pool of genes—called switch genes—critically associated with drastic changes in cell phenotype. Here, we describe SWIM tool along with its applications to cancer research and compare its predictions with DIAMOnD disease genes

Interaction and cross-talk between non-coding RNAs.

Non-coding RNA (ncRNA) has been shown to regulate diverse cellular processes and functions through controlling gene expression. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) act as a competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) where microRNAs (miRNAs) and lncRNAs regulate each other through their biding sites. Interactions of miRNAs and lncRNAs have been reported to trigger decay of the targeted lncRNAs and have important roles in target gene regulation. These interactions form complicated and intertwined networks. Certain lncRNAs encode miRNAs and small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), and may regulate expression of these small RNAs as precursors. SnoRNAs have also been reported to be precursors for PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) and thus may regulate the piRNAs as a precursor. These miRNAs and piRNAs target messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and regulate gene expression. In this review, we will present and discuss these interactions, cross-talk, and co-regulation of ncRNAs and gene regulation due to these interactions

생물학적 사전 지식을 활용한 고차원의 다중 오믹스 관계를 찾는 컴퓨터 공학적 접근 방법

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 컴퓨터공학부, 2021.8. 김선.세포가 어떻게 기능하고 외부 자극에 반응하는지 이해하는 것은 생물학, 의학에서 가장 중요한 관심사 중 하나이다. 기술의 발전으로 과학자들은 단일 생물학적 실험으로 세포의 변화요인들을 쉽게 측정할 수 있게 되었다. 주목할만한 예시로 게놈 시퀀싱, 유전자 발현량 측정, 유전자 발현을 조절하는 후성 유전체 측정 같은 다중 오믹스 데이터가 있다. 세포의 상태를 더 자세히 이해하기 위해서 다중 오믹스 조절자와 유전자 사이의 조절 관계를 알아내는 것이 중요하다. 하지만 다중 오믹스 조절 관계는 매우 복잡하고 모든 세포 상태 특이적인 관계를 실험적으로 검증하는 것은 불가능하다. 따라서, 서로 다른 유형의 고차원 오믹스 데이터로부터 관계를 예측하기 위한 효율적인 컴퓨터 공학적 접근방법이 요구된다. 이러한 고차원 데이터를 처리하는 한 가지 방법은 다양한 데이터베이스에서 선별된 유전자의 기능과 오믹스 간의 관계와 같은 외부 생물학적 지식을 통합하여 활용하는 것이다. 본 박사학위 논문은 생물학적 사전 지식을 활용하여 다중 오믹스 데이터로부터 유전자의 발현을 조절하는 관계를 예측하기 위한 세 가지 컴퓨터 공학적인 접근법을 제안하였다. 첫 번째는 마이크로 알엔에이와 유전자의 일대다 관계를 예측하기 위한 기법이다. 마이크로 알엔에이 표적 예측 문제는 가능한 표적 유전자의 개수가 너무 많으며 거짓 양성과 거짓음성의 비율을 조절해야 하는 문제가 있다. 이러한 문제를 해결하기 위해 마이크로 알엔에이-유전자와 데이터의 맥락 사이의 연관성을 문헌 지식을 활용하여 결정하고 마이크로 알엔에이-유전자 관계를 예측하기 위한 ContextMMIA를 개발하였다. ContextMMIA는 통계적 유의성과 문헌 관련성을 기반으로 마이크로 알엔에이-유전자 관계의 점수를 계산하여 관계의 우선순위를 결정한다. 예후가 다른 유방암 데이터에 대한 실험에서 ContextMMIA는 예후가 나쁜 유방암에서 활성화된 마이크로 알엔에이-유전자 관계를 예측하였고 기존 실험적으로 검증된 관계가 높은 우선순위로 예측되었으며 해당 유전자들이 유방암 관련 경로에 관여하는 것으로 알려졌다. 두 번째는 약물 반응을 일으키는 유전자의 다대일 조절 관계를 예측하기 위한 기법이다. 약물 반응 예측을 위해서 약물 반응 매개 유전자를 결정해야 하며 이를 위해 20,000개 유전자의 다중 오믹스 데이터를 통합 분석하는 방법이 필요하다. 이 문제를 해결하기 위해 저차원 임베딩 방법, 약물-유전자 연관성에 대한 문헌 지식 및 유전자-유전자 상호 작용 지식을 활용하여 약물 반응을 예측하기 위한 DRIM을 개발하였다. DRIM은 오토인코더, 텐서 분해, 약물-유전자 연관성을 이용하여 다중 오믹스 데이터에서 다대일 관계를 결정한다. 결정된 매개 유전자의 조절 관계를 유전자-유전자 상호 작용 지식과 약물 반응 시계열 유전자 발현 데이터의 상호 상관관계를 이용하여 결정한다. 유방암 세포주 데이터에 대한 실험에서 DRIM은 라파티닙이 표적으로 하는 PI3K-Akt 패스웨이에 관여하는 유전자들의 약물 반응 조절 관계를 예측하였고 라파티닙 반응성과 관련된 매개 유전자를 예측하였다. 그리고 예측된 조절 관계가 세포주 특이적인 패턴을 보이는 것을 확인하였다. 세 번째는 세포의 상태를 설명하는 조절자와 유전자의 다대다 조절 관계를 예측하기 위한 기법이다. 다대다 관계 예측을 위해 관찰된 유전자 발현 값과 유전자 조절 네트워크로부터 추정된 유전자 발현 값 사이의 차이를 측정하는 목적 함수를 만들었다. 목적 함수를 최소화하기 위하여 조절인자와 유전자의 수에 따라 기하급수적으로 증가하는 검색 공간을 탐색해야 한다. 이 문제를 해결하기 위해 조절자-유전자 상호 작용 지식을 활용하여 두 가지 연산을 반복하여 조절 관계를 찾는 최적화 기법을 개발하였다. 첫 번째 단계는 네트워크에 간선을 추가하기 위해 강화 학습 기반 휴리스틱을 통해 조절자를 선택하는 다대일 유전자 중심 관계를 탐색하는 단계이다. 두 번째 단계는 네트워크에서 간선을 제거하기 위해 유전자를 확률적으로 선택하는 일대다 조절자 중심 관계를 탐색하는 단계이다. 유방암 세포주 데이터에 대한 실험에서 제안된 방법은 이전의 최적화 방법보다 더 정확한 유전자 발현량 추정을 하였고 조절자 및 유전자 발현 데이터로 유방암 아형 특이적 네트워크를 구성하였다. 또한, 유방암 아형 관련 실험 검증된 조절 관계를 예측하였다. 요약하면, 본 박사학위 논문은 다중 오믹스 조절자와 유전자의 사이의 일대다, 다대일, 다대다 관계를 예측하기 위하여 생물학적 지식을 활용한 컴퓨터 공학적 접근법을 제안하였다. 제안된 방법은 증가하고 있는 분자 생물학 데이터를 분석하여 유전자 조절 상호 작용을 이해함으로써 세포 기능에 대한 심층적인 이해를 도와줄 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.Understanding how cells function or respond to external stimuli is one of the most important questions in biology and medicine. Thanks to the advances in instrumental technologies, scientists can routinely measure events within cells in single biological experiments. Notable examples are multi-omics data: sequencing of genomes, quantifications of gene expression, and identification of epigenetic events that regulate expression of genes. In order to better understand cellular mechanisms, it is essential to identify regulatory relationships between multi-omics regulators and genes. However, regulatory relationships are very complex and it is infeasible to validate all condition-specific relationships experimentally. Thus, there is an urgent need for an efficient computational method to extract relationships from different types of high-dimensional omics data. One way to address these high-dimensional data is to incorporate external biological knowledge such as relationships between omics and functions of genes curated in various databases. In my doctoral study, I developed three computational approaches to identify the regulatory relationships from multi-omics data utilizing biological prior knowledge. The first study proposes a method to predict one-to-m relationships between miRNA and genes. The computational challenge of miRNA target prediction is that there are many miRNA target candidates, and the ratio of false positives to false negatives needs to be adjusted. This challenge is addressed by utilizing literature knowledge for determining the association between miRNA-gene and a given context. In this study, I developed ContextMMIA to predict miRNA-gene relationships from miRNA and gene expression data. ContextMMIA computes scores of miRNA-gene relationships based on statistical significance and literature relevance and prioritizes the relationships based on the scores. In experiments on breast cancer data with different prognosis, ContextMMIA predicted differentially activated miRNA-gene relationships in invasive breast cancer. The experimentally verified miRNA-gene relationships were predicted with high priority and those genes are known to be involved in breast cancer-related pathways. The second study proposes a method to predict n-to-one relationships between regulators and gene on drug response. The computational challenge of drug response prediction is how to integrate multi-omics data of 20,000 genes for determining drug response mediator genes. This challenge is addressed by utilizing low-dimensional embedding methods, literature knowledge of drug-gene associations, and gene-gene interaction knowledge. For this problem, I developed DRIM to predict drug response relationships from the multi-omics data and drug-induced time-series gene expression data. DRIM uses autoencoder, tensor decomposition, and drug-gene association to determine n-to-one relationships from multi-omics data. Then, regulatory relationships of mediator genes are determined by gene-gene interaction knowledge and cross-correlation of drug-induced time-series gene expression data. In experiments on breast cancer cell line data, DRIM extracted mediator genes relevant to drug response and regulatory relationships of genes involved in the PI3K-Akt pathway targeted by lapatinib. In addition, DRIM revealed distinguished patterns of relationships in breast cancer cell lines with different lapatinib resistance. The third study proposes a method to predict n-to-m relationships between regulators and genes. In order to predict n-to-m relationships, this study formulated an objective function that measures the deviation between observed gene expression values and estimated gene expression values derived from gene regulatory networks. The computational challenge of minimizing the objective function is to navigate the search space of relationships exponentially increasing according to the number of regulators and genes. This challenge is addressed by the iterative local optimization with regulator-gene interaction knowledge. In this study, I developed a two-step iterative RL-based method to predict n-to-m relationships from regulator and gene expression data. The first step is to explore the n-to-one gene-oriented step that selects regulators by reinforcement learning based heuristic to add edges to the network. The second step is to explore the one-to-m regulator-oriented step that stochastically selects genes to remove edges from the network. In experiments on breast cancer cell line data, the proposed method constructed breast cancer subtype-specific networks from the regulator and gene expression profiles with a more accurate gene expression estimation than previous combinatorial optimization methods. Moreover, regulatory relationships involved in the networks were associated with breast cancer subtypes. In summary, in this thesis, I proposed computational methods for predicting one-to-m, n-to-one, and n-to-m relationships between multi-omics regulators and genes utilizing external domain knowledge. The proposed methods are expected to deepen our knowledge of cellular mechanisms by understanding gene regulatory interactions by analyzing the ever-increasing molecular biology data such as The Cancer Genome Atlas, Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Biological background 1 1.1.1 Multi-omics analysis 1 1.1.2 Multi-omics relationships indicating cell state 2 1.1.3 Biological prior knowledge 4 1.2 Research problems for the multi-omics relationship 6 1.3 Computational challenges and approaches in the exploring multiomics relationship 6 1.4 Outline of the thesis 12 Chapter 2 Literature-based condition-specific miRNA-mRNA target prediction 13 2.1 Computational Problem & Evaluation criterion 14 2.2 Related works 15 2.3 Motivation 17 2.4 Methods 20 2.4.1 Identifying genes and miRNAs based on the user-provided context 22 2.4.2 Omics Score 23 2.4.3 Context Score 24 2.4.4 Confidence Score 26 2.5 Results 26 2.5.1 Pathway analysis 27 2.5.2 Reproducibility of validated targets in humans 31 2.5.3 Sensitivity tests when different keywords are used 33 2.6 Summary 34 Chapter 3 DRIM: A web-based system for investigating drug response at the molecular level by condition-specific multi-omics data integration 36 3.1 Computational Problem & Evaluation criterion 37 3.2 Related works 38 3.3 Motivation 42 3.4 Methods 44 3.4.1 Step 1: Input 45 3.4.2 Step 2: Identifying perturbed sub-pathway with time-series 45 3.4.3 Step 3: Embedding multi-omics for selecting potential mediator genes 47 3.4.4 Step 4: Construct TF-regulatory time-bounded network and identify regulatory path 52 3.4.5 Step 5: Analysis result on the web 52 3.5 Case study: Comparative analysis of breast cancer cell lines that have different sensitivity with lapatinib 54 3.5.1 Multi-omics analysis result before drug treatment 56 3.5.2 Time-series gene expression analysis after drug treatment 57 3.6 Summary 61 Chapter 4 Combinatorial modeling and optimization using iterative RL search for inferring sample-specific regulatory network 63 4.1 Computational Problem & Evaluation criterion 64 4.2 Related works 64 4.3 Motivation 66 4.4 Methods 68 4.4.1 Formulating an objective function 68 4.4.2 Overview of an iterative search method 70 4.4.3 G-step for exploring n-to-one gene-oriented relationship 73 4.4.4 R-step for exploring one-to-m regulator-oriented relationship 79 4.5 Results 80 4.5.1 Cancer cell line data 80 4.5.2 Hyperparameters 81 4.5.3 Quantitative evaluation 82 4.5.4 Qualitative evaluation 83 4.6 Summary 86 Chapter 5 Conclusions 88 국문초록 111박

A Network of microRNAs Acts to Promote Cell Cycle Exit and Differentiation of Human Pancreatic Endocrine Cells.

Pancreatic endocrine cell differentiation is orchestrated by the action of transcription factors that operate in a gene regulatory network to activate endocrine lineage genes and repress lineage-inappropriate genes. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important modulators of gene expression, yet their role in endocrine cell differentiation has not been systematically explored. Here we characterize miRNA-regulatory networks active in human endocrine cell differentiation by combining small RNA sequencing, miRNA over-expression, and network modeling approaches. Our analysis identified Let-7g, Let-7a, miR-200a, miR-127, and miR-375 as endocrine-enriched miRNAs that drive endocrine cell differentiation-associated gene expression changes. These miRNAs are predicted to target different transcription factors, which converge on genes involved in cell cycle regulation. When expressed in human embryonic stem cell-derived pancreatic progenitors, these miRNAs induce cell cycle exit and promote endocrine cell differentiation. Our study delineates the role of miRNAs in human endocrine cell differentiation and identifies miRNAs that could facilitate endocrine cell reprogramming

Exploring complex miRNA-mRNA interactions with Bayesian networks by splitting-averaging strategy

© 2009 Liu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Background: microRNAs (miRNAs) regulate target gene expression by controlling their mRNAs post-transcriptionally. Increasing evidence demonstrates that miRNAs play important roles in various biological processes. However, the functions and precise regulatory mechanisms of most miRNAs remain elusive. Current research suggests that miRNA regulatory modules are complicated, including up-, down-, and mix-regulation for different physiological conditions. Previous computational approaches for discovering miRNA-mRNA interactions focus only on down-regulatory modules. In this work, we present a method to capture complex miRNA-mRNA interactions including all regulatory types between miRNAs and mRNAs. Results: We present a method to capture complex miRNA-mRNA interactions using Bayesian network structure learning with splitting-averaging strategy. It is designed to explore all possible miRNA-mRNA interactions by integrating miRNA-targeting information, expression profiles of miRNAs and mRNAs, and sample categories. We also present an analysis of data sets for epithelial and mesenchymal transition (EMT). Our results show that the proposed method identified all possible types of miRNA-mRNA interactions from the data. Many interactions are of tremendous biological significance. Some discoveries have been validated by previous research, for example, the miR-200 family negatively regulates ZEB1 and ZEB2 for EMT. Some are consistent with the literature, such as LOX has wide interactions with the miR-200 family members for EMT. Furthermore, many novel interactions are statistically significant and worthy of validation in the near future. Conclusions: This paper presents a new method to explore the complex miRNA-mRNA interactions for different physiological conditions using Bayesian network structure learning with splitting-averaging strategy. The method makes use of heterogeneous data including miRNA-targeting information, expression profiles of miRNAs and mRNAs, and sample categories. Results on EMT data sets show that the proposed method uncovers many known miRNA targets as well as new potentially promising miRNA-mRNA interactions. These interactions could not be achieved by the normal Bayesian network structure learning.Bing Liu, Jiuyong Li, Anna Tsykin, Lin Liu, Arti B. Gaur and Gregory J. Goodal

Connecting rules from paired miRNA and mRNA expression data sets of HCV patients to detect both inverse and positive regulatory relationships

© 2015 Song et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. Background: Intensive research based on the inverse expression relationship has been undertaken to discover the miRNA-mRNA regulatory modules involved in the infection of Hepatitis C virus (HCV), the leading cause of chronic liver diseases. However, biological studies in other fields have found that inverse expression relationship is not the only regulatory relationship between miRNAs and their targets, and some miRNAs can positively regulate a mRNA by binding at the 5' UTR of the mRNA.Results: This work focuses on the detection of both inverse and positive regulatory relationships from a paired miRNA and mRNA expression data set of HCV patients through a 'change-to-change' method which can derive connected discriminatory rules. Our study uncovered many novel miRNA-mRNA regulatory modules. In particular, it was revealed that GFRA2 is positively regulated by miR-557, miR-765 and miR-17-3p that probably bind at different locations of the 5' UTR of this mRNA. The expression relationship between GFRA2 and any of these three miRNAs has not been studied before, although separate research for this gene and these miRNAs have all drawn conclusions linked to hepatocellular carcinoma. This suggests that the binding of mRNA GFRA2 with miR-557, miR-765, or miR-17-3p, or their combinations, is worthy of further investigation by experimentation. We also report another mRNA QKI which has a strong inverse expression relationship with miR-129 and miR-493-3p which may bind at the 3' UTR of QKI with a perfect sequence match. Furthermore, the interaction between hsa-miR-129-5p (previous ID: hsa-miR-129) and QKI is supported with CLIP-Seq data from starBase. Our method can be easily extended for the expression data analysis of other diseases.Conclusion: Our rule discovery method is useful for integrating binding information and expression profile for identifying HCV miRNA-mRNA regulatory modules and can be applied to the study of the expression profiles of other complex human diseases

Epigenomic regulation of heart failure: integrating histone marks, long noncoding RNAs, and chromatin architecture.

Epigenetic processes are known to have powerful roles in organ development across biology. It has recently been found that some of the chromatin modulatory machinery essential for proper development plays a previously unappreciated role in the pathogenesis of cardiac disease in adults. Investigations using genetic and pharmacologic gain- and loss-of-function approaches have interrogated the function of distinct epigenetic regulators, while the increased deployment of the suite of next-generation sequencing technologies have fundamentally altered our understanding of the genomic targets of these chromatin modifiers. Here, we review recent developments in basic and translational research that have provided tantalizing clues that may be used to unlock the therapeutic potential of the epigenome in heart failure. Additionally, we provide a hypothesis to explain how signal-induced crosstalk between histone tail modifications and long non-coding RNAs triggers chromatin architectural remodeling and culminates in cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis