Hepatitis C virus infection protein network

A proteome-wide mapping of interactions between hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human proteins was performed to provide a comprehensive view of the cellular infection. A total of 314 protein–protein interactions between HCV and human proteins was identified by yeast two-hybrid and 170 by literature mining. Integration of this data set into a reconstructed human interactome showed that cellular proteins interacting with HCV are enriched in highly central and interconnected proteins. A global analysis on the basis of functional annotation highlighted the enrichment of cellular pathways targeted by HCV. A network of proteins associated with frequent clinical disorders of chronically infected patients was constructed by connecting the insulin, Jak/STAT and TGFβ pathways with cellular proteins targeted by HCV. CORE protein appeared as a major perturbator of this network. Focal adhesion was identified as a new function affected by HCV, mainly by NS3 and NS5A proteins

A systems biology approach to the evolution of plant-virus interactions

[EN] Omic approaches to the analysis of plant-virus interactions are becoming increasingly popular. These types of data, in combination with models of interaction networks, will aid in revealing not only host components that are important for the virus life cycle, but also general patterns about the way in which different viruses manipulate host regulation of gene expression for their own benefit and possible mechanisms by which viruses evade host defenses. Here, we review studies identifying host genes regulated by viruses and discuss how these genes integrate in host regulatory and interaction networks, with a particular focus on the physical properties of these networks. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.This work was supported by grants from the Spanish MICINN (BFU2009-06993) and Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO2010/019). GR is supported by a fellowship from Generalitat Valenciana (BFPI2007-160) and JC by a contract from MICINN (Grant TIN2006-12860). We thank Jose-Antonio Dares and Gustavo G. Gomez for comments.Elena Fito, SF.; Carrera, J.; Rodrigo, J. (2011). A systems biology approach to the evolution of plant-virus interactions. Current Opinion in Plant Biology. 14(4):372-377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbi.2011.03.013S37237714

A systematic analysis of host factors reveals a Med23-interferon-λ regulatory axis against herpes simplex virus type 1 replication

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is a neurotropic virus causing vesicular oral or genital skin lesions, meningitis and other diseases particularly harmful in immunocompromised individuals. To comprehensively investigate the complex interaction between HSV-1 and its host we combined two genome-scale screens for host factors (HFs) involved in virus replication. A yeast two-hybrid screen for protein interactions and a RNA interference (RNAi) screen with a druggable genome small interfering RNA (siRNA) library confirmed existing and identified novel HFs which functionally influence HSV-1 infection. Bioinformatic analyses found the 358 HFs were enriched for several pathways and multi-protein complexes. Of particular interest was the identification of Med23 as a strongly anti-viral component of the largely pro-viral Mediator complex, which links specific transcription factors to RNA polymerase II. The anti-viral effect of Med23 on HSV-1 replication was confirmed in gain-of-function gene overexpression experiments, and this inhibitory effect was specific to HSV-1, as a range of other viruses including Vaccinia virus and Semliki Forest virus were unaffected by Med23 depletion. We found Med23 significantly upregulated expression of the type III interferon family (IFN-λ) at the mRNA and protein level by directly interacting with the transcription factor IRF7. The synergistic effect of Med23 and IRF7 on IFN-λ induction suggests this is the major transcription factor for IFN-λ expression. Genotypic analysis of patients suffering recurrent orofacial HSV-1 outbreaks, previously shown to be deficient in IFN-λ secretion, found a significant correlation with a single nucleotide polymorphism in the IFN-λ3 (IL28b) promoter strongly linked to Hepatitis C disease and treatment outcome. This paper describes a link between Med23 and IFN-λ, provides evidence for the crucial role of IFN-λ in HSV-1 immune control, and highlights the power of integrative genome-scale approaches to identify HFs critical for disease progression and outcome

Computational Prediction of Host-Parasite Protein Interactions between P. falciparum and H. sapiens

To obtain candidates of interactions between proteins of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the human host, homologous and conserved interactions were inferred from various sources of interaction data. Such candidate interactions were assessed by applying a machine learning approach and further filtered according to expression and molecular characteristics, enabling involved proteins to indeed interact. The analysis of predicted interactions indicated that parasite proteins predominantly target central proteins to take control of a human host cell. Furthermore, parasite proteins utilized their protein repertoire in a combinatorial manner, providing a broad connection to host cellular processes. In particular, several prominent pathways of signaling and regulation proteins were predicted to interact with parasite chaperones. Such a result suggests an important role of remodeling proteins in the interaction interface between the human host and the parasite. Identification of such molecular strategies that allow the parasite to take control of the host has the potential to deepen our understanding of the parasite specific remodeling processes of the host cell and illuminate new avenues of disease intervention

ViralORFeome: an integrated database to generate a versatile collection of viral ORFs

Large collections of protein-encoding open reading frames (ORFs) established in a versatile recombination-based cloning system have been instrumental to study protein functions in high-throughput assays. Such ‘ORFeome’ resources have been developed for several organisms but in virology, plasmid collections covering a significant fraction of the virosphere are still needed. In this perspective, we present ViralORFeome 1.0 (http://www.viralorfeome.com), an open-access database and management system that provides an integrated set of bioinformatic tools to clone viral ORFs in the Gateway® system. ViralORFeome provides a convenient interface to navigate through virus genome sequences, to design ORF-specific cloning primers, to validate the sequence of generated constructs and to browse established collections of virus ORFs. Most importantly, ViralORFeome has been designed to manage all possible variants or mutants of a given ORF so that the cloning procedure can be applied to any emerging virus strain. A subset of plasmid constructs generated with ViralORFeome platform has been tested with success for heterologous protein expression in different expression systems at proteome scale. ViralORFeome should provide our community with a framework to establish a large collection of virus ORF clones, an instrumental resource to determine functions, activities and binding partners of viral proteins

A meta-analysis reveals the commonalities and differences in Arabidopsis thaliana response to different viral pathogens

Understanding the mechanisms by which plants trigger host defenses in response to viruses has been a challenging problem owing to the multiplicity of factors and complexity of interactions involved. The advent of genomic techniques, however, has opened the possibility to grasp a global picture of the interaction. Here, we used Arabidopsis thaliana to identify and compare genes that are differentially regulated upon infection with seven distinct (+)ssRNA and one ssDNA plant viruses. In the first approach, we established lists of genes differentially affected by each virus and compared their involvement in biological functions and metabolic processes. We found that phylogenetically related viruses significantly alter the expression of similar genes and that viruses naturally infecting Brassicaceae display a greater overlap in the plant response. In the second approach, virus-regulated genes were contextualized using models of transcriptional and protein-protein interaction networks of A. thaliana. Our results confirm that host cells undergo significant reprogramming of their transcriptome during infection, which is possibly a central requirement for the mounting of host defenses. We uncovered a general mode of action in which perturbations preferentially affect genes that are highly connected, central and organized in modules. © 2012 Rodrigo et al.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN) grants BFU2009-06993 (S. F. E.) and BIO2006-13107 (C. L.) and by Generalitat Valenciana grant PROMETEO2010/016 (S. F. E.). G. R. is supported by a graduate fellowship from the Generalitat Valenciana (BFPI2007-160) and J.C. by a contract from MICINN grant TIN2006-12860. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Rodrigo Tarrega, G.; Carrera Montesinos, J.; Ruiz-Ferrer, V.; Del Toro, F.; Llave, C.; Voinnet, O.; Elena Fito, SF. (2012). A meta-analysis reveals the commonalities and differences in Arabidopsis thaliana response to different viral pathogens. PLoS ONE. 7(7):40526-40526. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040526S405264052677Peng, X., Chan, E. Y., Li, Y., Diamond, D. L., Korth, M. J., & Katze, M. G. (2009). Virus–host interactions: from systems biology to translational research. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 12(4), 432-438. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2009.06.003Dodds, P. N., & Rathjen, J. P. (2010). Plant immunity: towards an integrated view of plant–pathogen interactions. Nature Reviews Genetics, 11(8), 539-548. doi:10.1038/nrg2812Maule, A., Leh, V., & Lederer, C. (2002). The dialogue between viruses and hosts in compatible interactions. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 5(4), 279-284. doi:10.1016/s1369-5266(02)00272-8Whitham, S. A., Quan, S., Chang, H.-S., Cooper, B., Estes, B., Zhu, T., … Hou, Y.-M. (2003). Diverse RNA viruses elicit the expression of common sets of genes in susceptibleArabidopsis thalianaplants. The Plant Journal, 33(2), 271-283. doi:10.1046/j.1365-313x.2003.01625.xBailer, S., & Haas, J. (2009). Connecting viral with cellular interactomes. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 12(4), 453-459. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2009.06.004Whitham, S. A., Yang, C., & Goodin, M. M. (2006). Global Impact: Elucidating Plant Responses to Viral Infection. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 19(11), 1207-1215. doi:10.1094/mpmi-19-1207MacPherson, J. I., Dickerson, J. E., Pinney, J. W., & Robertson, D. L. (2010). Patterns of HIV-1 Protein Interaction Identify Perturbed Host-Cellular Subsystems. PLoS Computational Biology, 6(7), e1000863. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000863Jenner, R. G., & Young, R. A. (2005). Insights into host responses against pathogens from transcriptional profiling. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 3(4), 281-294. doi:10.1038/nrmicro1126Andeweg, A. C., Haagmans, B. L., & Osterhaus, A. D. (2008). Virogenomics: the virus–host interaction revisited. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 11(5), 461-466. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2008.09.010Elena, S. F., Carrera, J., & Rodrigo, G. (2011). A systems biology approach to the evolution of plant–virus interactions. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 14(4), 372-377. doi:10.1016/j.pbi.2011.03.013Tan, S.-L., Ganji, G., Paeper, B., Proll, S., & Katze, M. G. (2007). Systems biology and the host response to viral infection. Nature Biotechnology, 25(12), 1383-1389. doi:10.1038/nbt1207-1383De la Fuente, A. (2010). From ‘differential expression’ to ‘differential networking’ – identification of dysfunctional regulatory networks in diseases. Trends in Genetics, 26(7), 326-333. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2010.05.001Albert, R. (2005). Scale-free networks in cell biology. Journal of Cell Science, 118(21), 4947-4957. doi:10.1242/jcs.02714Yu, H., Braun, P., Yildirim, M. A., Lemmens, I., Venkatesan, K., Sahalie, J., … Vidal, M. (2008). High-Quality Binary Protein Interaction Map of the Yeast Interactome Network. Science, 322(5898), 104-110. doi:10.1126/science.1158684Barabási, A.-L., & Oltvai, Z. N. (2004). Network biology: understanding the cell’s functional organization. Nature Reviews Genetics, 5(2), 101-113. doi:10.1038/nrg1272Albert, R., Jeong, H., & Barabási, A.-L. (2000). Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. Nature, 406(6794), 378-382. doi:10.1038/35019019Mukhtar, M. S., Carvunis, A.-R., Dreze, M., Epple, P., Steinbrenner, J., … Moore, J. (2011). Independently Evolved Virulence Effectors Converge onto Hubs in a Plant Immune System Network. Science, 333(6042), 596-601. doi:10.1126/science.1203659Calderwood, M. A., Venkatesan, K., Xing, L., Chase, M. R., Vazquez, A., Holthaus, A. M., … Johannsen, E. (2007). Epstein-Barr virus and virus human protein interaction maps. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(18), 7606-7611. doi:10.1073/pnas.0702332104De Chassey, B., Navratil, V., Tafforeau, L., Hiet, M. S., Aublin‐Gex, A., Agaugué, S., … Lotteau, V. (2008). Hepatitis C virus infection protein network. Molecular Systems Biology, 4(1), 230. doi:10.1038/msb.2008.66Shapira, S. D., Gat-Viks, I., Shum, B. O. V., Dricot, A., de Grace, M. M., Wu, L., … Hacohen, N. (2009). A Physical and Regulatory Map of Host-Influenza Interactions Reveals Pathways in H1N1 Infection. Cell, 139(7), 1255-1267. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.12.018Dyer, M. D., Murali, T. M., & Sobral, B. W. (2008). The Landscape of Human Proteins Interacting with Viruses and Other Pathogens. PLoS Pathogens, 4(2), e32. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.0040032Golem, S., & Culver, J. N. (2003). Tobacco mosaic virusInduced Alterations in the Gene Expression Profile ofArabidopsis thaliana. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 16(8), 681-688. doi:10.1094/mpmi.2003.16.8.681Espinoza, C., Medina, C., Somerville, S., & Arce-Johnson, P. (2007). Senescence-associated genes induced during compatible viral interactions with grapevine and Arabidopsis. Journal of Experimental Botany, 58(12), 3197-3212. doi:10.1093/jxb/erm165Yang, C., Guo, R., Jie, F., Nettleton, D., Peng, J., Carr, T., … Whitham, S. A. (2007). Spatial Analysis ofArabidopsis thalianaGene Expression in Response toTurnip mosaic virusInfection. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 20(4), 358-370. doi:10.1094/mpmi-20-4-0358Agudelo-Romero, P., Carbonell, P., de la Iglesia, F., Carrera, J., Rodrigo, G., Jaramillo, A., … Elena, S. F. (2008). Changes in the gene expression profile of Arabidopsis thaliana after infection with Tobacco etch virus. Virology Journal, 5(1), 92. doi:10.1186/1743-422x-5-92Agudelo-Romero, P., Carbonell, P., Perez-Amador, M. A., & Elena, S. F. (2008). Virus Adaptation by Manipulation of Host’s Gene Expression. PLoS ONE, 3(6), e2397. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002397Ascencio-Ibáñez, J. T., Sozzani, R., Lee, T.-J., Chu, T.-M., Wolfinger, R. D., Cella, R., & Hanley-Bowdoin, L. (2008). Global Analysis of Arabidopsis Gene Expression Uncovers a Complex Array of Changes Impacting Pathogen Response and Cell Cycle during Geminivirus Infection. Plant Physiology, 148(1), 436-454. doi:10.1104/pp.108.121038Babu, M., Griffiths, J. S., Huang, T.-S., & Wang, A. (2008). Altered gene expression changes in Arabidopsis leaf tissues and protoplasts in response to Plum pox virus infection. BMC Genomics, 9(1), 325. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-9-325De Vienne, D. M., Giraud, T., & Martin, O. C. (2007). A congruence index for testing topological similarity between trees. Bioinformatics, 23(23), 3119-3124. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btm500Wise, R. P., Moscou, M. J., Bogdanove, A. J., & Whitham, S. A. (2007). Transcript Profiling in Host–Pathogen Interactions. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 45(1), 329-369. doi:10.1146/annurev.phyto.45.011107.143944Handford, M. G., & Carr, J. P. (2007). A defect in carbohydrate metabolism ameliorates symptom severity in virus-infected Arabidopsis thaliana. Journal of General Virology, 88(1), 337-341. doi:10.1099/vir.0.82376-0Hou, B., Lim, E.-K., Higgins, G. S., & Bowles, D. J. (2004). N-Glucosylation of Cytokinins by Glycosyltransferases ofArabidopsis thaliana. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 279(46), 47822-47832. doi:10.1074/jbc.m409569200Schwender, J., Goffman, F., Ohlrogge, J. B., & Shachar-Hill, Y. (2004). Rubisco without the Calvin cycle improves the carbon efficiency of developing green seeds. Nature, 432(7018), 779-782. doi:10.1038/nature03145Pagán, I., Alonso-Blanco, C., & García-Arenal, F. (2008). Host Responses in Life-History Traits and Tolerance to Virus Infection in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLoS Pathogens, 4(8), e1000124. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000124Carrera, J., Rodrigo, G., Jaramillo, A., & Elena, S. F. (2009). Reverse-engineering the Arabidopsis thaliana transcriptional network under changing environmental conditions. Genome Biology, 10(9), R96. doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-9-r96Geisler-Lee, J., O’Toole, N., Ammar, R., Provart, N. J., Millar, A. H., & Geisler, M. (2007). A Predicted Interactome for Arabidopsis. Plant Physiology, 145(2), 317-329. doi:10.1104/pp.107.103465Ma, S., Gong, Q., & Bohnert, H. J. (2007). An Arabidopsis gene network based on the graphical Gaussian model. Genome Research, 17(11), 1614-1625. doi:10.1101/gr.6911207Yamada, T., & Bork, P. (2009). Evolution of biomolecular networks — lessons from metabolic and protein interactions. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 10(11), 791-803. doi:10.1038/nrm2787Humphries, M. D., & Gurney, K. (2008). Network ‘Small-World-Ness’: A Quantitative Method for Determining Canonical Network Equivalence. PLoS ONE, 3(4), e0002051. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002051Stumpf, M. P. H., & Ingram, P. J. (2005). Probability models for degree distributions of protein interaction networks. Europhysics Letters (EPL), 71(1), 152-158. doi:10.1209/epl/i2004-10531-8Khanin, R., & Wit, E. (2006). How Scale-Free Are Biological Networks. Journal of Computational Biology, 13(3), 810-818. doi:10.1089/cmb.2006.13.810Daudin, J.-J., Picard, F., & Robin, S. (2007). A mixture model for random graphs. Statistics and Computing, 18(2), 173-183. doi:10.1007/s11222-007-9046-7Uetz, P. (2006). Herpesviral Protein Networks and Their Interaction with the Human Proteome. Science, 311(5758), 239-242. doi:10.1126/science.1116804Choi, I.-R., Stenger, D. C., & French, R. (2000). Multiple Interactions among Proteins Encoded by the Mite-Transmitted Wheat Streak Mosaic Tritimovirus. Virology, 267(2), 185-198. doi:10.1006/viro.1999.0117Guo, D., Saarma, M., Rajamäki, M.-L., & Valkonen, J. P. T. (2001). Towards a protein interaction map of potyviruses: protein interaction matrixes of two potyviruses based on the yeast two-hybrid system. Journal of General Virology, 82(4), 935-939. doi:10.1099/0022-1317-82-4-935Lin, L., Shi, Y., Luo, Z., Lu, Y., Zheng, H., Yan, F., … Wu, Y. (2009). Protein–protein interactions in two potyviruses using the yeast two-hybrid system. Virus Research, 142(1-2), 36-40. doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2009.01.006Shen, W., Wang, M., Yan, P., Gao, L., & Zhou, P. (2010). Protein interaction matrix of Papaya ringspot virus type P based on a yeast two-hybrid system. Acta Virologica, 54(1), 49-54. doi:10.4149/av_2010_01_49Redner, S. (2008). Teasing out the missing links. Nature, 453(7191), 47-48. doi:10.1038/453047aIrizarry, R. A. (2003). Exploration, normalization, and summaries of high density oligonucleotide array probe level data. Biostatistics, 4(2), 249-264. doi:10.1093/biostatistics/4.2.249Smyth, G. K. (2004). Linear Models and Empirical Bayes Methods for Assessing Differential Expression in Microarray Experiments. Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology, 3(1), 1-25. doi:10.2202/1544-6115.1027Allemeersch, J., Durinck, S., Vanderhaeghen, R., Alard, P., Maes, R., Seeuws, K., … Kuiper, M. T. R. (2005). Benchmarking the CATMA Microarray. A Novel Tool forArabidopsis Transcriptome Analysis. Plant Physiology, 137(2), 588-601. doi:10.1104/pp.104.051300Cleveland, W. S. (1979). Robust Locally Weighted Regression and Smoothing Scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74(368), 829-836. doi:10.1080/01621459.1979.10481038Tarraga, J., Medina, I., Carbonell, J., Huerta-Cepas, J., Minguez, P., Alloza, E., … Dopazo, J. (2008). GEPAS, a web-based tool for microarray data analysis and interpretation. Nucleic Acids Research, 36(Web Server), W308-W314. doi:10.1093/nar/gkn303Al-Shahrour, F., Minguez, P., Vaquerizas, J. M., Conde, L., & Dopazo, J. (2005). BABELOMICS: a suite of web tools for functional annotation and analysis of groups of genes in high-throughput experiments. Nucleic Acids Research, 33(Web Server), W460-W464. doi:10.1093/nar/gki456Al-Shahrour, F., Minguez, P., Tárraga, J., Medina, I., Alloza, E., Montaner, D., & Dopazo, J. (2007). FatiGO +: a functional profiling tool for genomic data. Integration of functional annotation, regulatory motifs and interaction data with microarray experiments. Nucleic Acids Research, 35(suppl_2), W91-W96. doi:10.1093/nar/gkm260Mueller, L. A., Zhang, P., & Rhee, S. Y. (2003). AraCyc: A Biochemical Pathway Database for Arabidopsis. Plant Physiology, 132(2), 453-460. doi:10.1104/pp.102.017236Navratil, V., de Chassey, B., Combe, C., & Lotteau, V. (2011). When the human viral infectome and diseasome networks collide: towards a systems biology platform for the aetiology of human diseases. BMC Systems Biology, 5(1), 13. doi:10.1186/1752-0509-5-13Shannon, C. E. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27(3), 379-423. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.

Integrative network analysis identified key genes and pathways in the progression of hepatitis C virus induced hepatocellular carcinoma

Background: Incidence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) induced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been increasing in the United States and Europe during recent years. Although HCV-associated HCC shares many pathological characteristics with other types of HCC, its molecular mechanisms of progression remain elusive. Methods: To investigate the underlying pathology, we developed a systematic approach to identify deregulated biological networks in HCC by integrating gene expression profiles with high-throughput protein-protein interaction data. We examined five stages including normal (control) liver, cirrhotic liver, dysplasia, early HCC and advanced HCC. Results: Among the five consecutive pathological stages, we identified four networks including precancerous networks (Normal-Cirrhosis and Cirrhosis-Dysplasia) and cancerous networks (Dysplasia-Early HCC, Early-Advanced HCC). We found little overlap between precancerous and cancerous networks, opposite to a substantial overlap within precancerous or cancerous networks. We further found that the hub proteins interacted with HCV proteins, suggesting direct interventions of these networks by the virus. The functional annotation of each network demonstrates a high degree of consistency with current knowledge in HCC. By assembling these functions into a module map, we could depict the stepwise biological functions that are deregulated in HCV-induced hepatocarcinogenesis. Additionally, these networks enable us to identify important genes and pathways by developmental stage, such as LCK signalling pathways in cirrhosis, MMP genes and TIMP genes in dysplastic liver, and CDC2-mediated cell cycle signalling in early and advanced HCC. CDC2 (alternative symbol CDK1), a cell cycle regulatory gene, is particularly interesting due to its topological position in temporally deregulated networks. Conclusions: Our study uncovers a temporal spectrum of functional deregulation and prioritizes key genes and pathways in the progression of HCV induced HCC. These findings present a wealth of information for further investigation

Associations between HIV and Human Pathways Revealed by Protein-Protein Interactions and Correlated Gene Expression Profiles

BACKGROUND: AIDS is one of the most devastating diseases in human history. Decades of studies have revealed host factors required for HIV infection, indicating that HIV exploits host processes for its own purposes. HIV infection leads to AIDS as well as various comorbidities. The associations between HIV and human pathways and diseases may reveal non-obvious relationships between HIV and non-HIV-defining diseases. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Human biological pathways were evaluated and statistically compared against the presence of HIV host factor related genes. All of the obtained scores comparing HIV targeted genes and biological pathways were ranked. Different rank results based on overlapping genes, recovered virus-host interactions, co-expressed genes, and common interactions in human protein-protein interaction networks were obtained. Correlations between rankings suggested that these measures yielded diverse rankings. Rank combination of these ranks led to a final ranking of HIV-associated pathways, which revealed that HIV is associated with immune cell-related pathways and several cancer-related pathways. The proposed method is also applicable to the evaluation of associations between other pathogens and human pathways and diseases. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that HIV infection shares common molecular mechanisms with certain signaling pathways and cancers. Interference in apoptosis pathways and the long-term suppression of immune system functions by HIV infection might contribute to tumorigenesis. Relationships between HIV infection and human pathways of disease may aid in the identification of common drug targets for viral infections and other diseases