Broad network-based predictability of Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene loss-of-function phenotypes

Loss-of-function phenotypes of yeast genes can be predicted from the loss-of-function phenotypes of their neighbours in functional gene networks. This could potentially be applied to the prediction of human disease genes

Prediction of gene–phenotype associations in humans, mice, and plants using phenologs

All authors are with the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. -- Ulf Martin Singh-Blom is with the Program in Computational and Applied Mathematics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA, and th Unit of Computational Medicine, Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm 171 76, Sweden. -- Kriston L. McGary is with the Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.Background: Phenotypes and diseases may be related to seemingly dissimilar phenotypes in other species by means of the orthology of underlying genes. Such “orthologous phenotypes,” or “phenologs,” are examples of deep homology, and may be used to predict additional candidate disease genes. Results: In this work, we develop an unsupervised algorithm for ranking phenolog-based candidate disease genes through the integration of predictions from the k nearest neighbor phenologs, comparing classifiers and weighting functions by cross-validation. We also improve upon the original method by extending the theory to paralogous phenotypes. Our algorithm makes use of additional phenotype data — from chicken, zebrafish, and E. coli, as well as new datasets for C. elegans — establishing that several types of annotations may be treated as phenotypes. We demonstrate the use of our algorithm to predict novel candidate genes for human atrial fibrillation (such as HRH2, ATP4A, ATP4B, and HOPX) and epilepsy (e.g., PAX6 and NKX2-1). We suggest gene candidates for pharmacologically-induced seizures in mouse, solely based on orthologous phenotypes from E. coli. We also explore the prediction of plant gene–phenotype associations, as for the Arabidopsis response to vernalization phenotype. Conclusions: We are able to rank gene predictions for a significant portion of the diseases in the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database. Additionally, our method suggests candidate genes for mammalian seizures based only on bacterial phenotypes and gene orthology. We demonstrate that phenotype information may come from diverse sources, including drug sensitivities, gene ontology biological processes, and in situ hybridization annotations. Finally, we offer testable candidates for a variety of human diseases, plant traits, and other classes of phenotypes across a wide array of species.Center for Systems and Synthetic BiologyInstitute for Cellular and Molecular [email protected]

Systematic Definition of Protein Constituents along the Major Polarization Axis Reveals an Adaptive Reuse of the Polarization Machinery in Pheromone-Treated Budding Yeast

Polarizing cells extensively restructure cellular components in a spatially and temporally coupledmanner along the major axis of cellular extension. Budding yeast are a useful model of polarized growth, helping to define many molecular components of this conserved process. Besides budding, yeast cells also differentiate upon treatment with pheromone from the opposite mating type, forming a mating projection (the ‘shmoo’) by directional restructuring of the cytoskeleton, localized vesicular transport and overall reorganization of the cytosol. To characterize the proteomic localization changes ac-companying polarized growth, we developed and implemented a novel cell microarray-based imaging assay for measuring the spatial redistribution of a large fraction of the yeast proteome, and applied this assay to identify proteins localized along the mating projection following pheromone treatment. We further trained a machine learning algorithm to refine the cell imaging screen, identifying additional shmoo-localized proteins. In all, we identified 74 proteins that specifically localize to the mating projection, including previously uncharacterized proteins (Ycr043c, Ydr348c, Yer071c, Ymr295c, and Yor304c-a) and known polarization complexes such as the exocyst. Functional analysis of these proteins, coupled with quantitative analysis of individual organelle movements during shmoo formation, suggests a model in which the basic machinery for cell polarization is generally conserved between processe

GEneSTATION 1.0: A Synthetic Resource of Diverse Evolutionary and Functional Genomic Data for Studying The Evolution of Pregnancy-Associated Tissues and Phenotypes

Mammalian gestation and pregnancy are fast evolving processes that involve the interaction of the fetal, maternal and paternal genomes. Version 1.0 of the GEneSTATION database (http://genestation.org) integrates diverse types of omics data across mammals to advance understanding of the genetic basis of gestation and pregnancy-associated phenotypes and to accelerate the translation of discoveries from model organisms to humans. GEneSTATION is built using tools from the Generic Model Organism Database project, including the biology-aware database CHADO, new tools for rapid data integration, and algorithms that streamline synthesis and user access. GEneSTATION contains curated life history information on pregnancy and reproduction from 23 high-quality mammalian genomes. For every human gene, GEneSTATION contains diverse evolutionary (e.g. gene age, population genetic and molecular evolutionary statistics), organismal (e.g. tissue-specific gene and protein expression, differential gene expression, disease phenotype), and molecular data types (e.g. Gene Ontology Annotation, protein interactions), as well as links to many general (e.g. Entrez, PubMed) and pregnancy disease-specific (e.g. PTBgene, dbPTB) databases. By facilitating the synthesis of diverse functional and evolutionary data in pregnancy-associated tissues and phenotypes and enabling their quick, intuitive, accurate and customized meta-analysis, GEneSTATION provides a novel platform for comprehensive investigation of the function and evolution of mammalian pregnancy

Quantitative cell morphology phenotypes are predicted significantly better than random expectation

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Broad network-based predictability of gene loss-of-function phenotypes"</p><p>http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/12/R258</p><p>Genome Biology 2007;8(12):R258-R258.</p><p>Published online 5 Dec 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2246260.</p><p></p> In contrast, genes whose disruption decreases population co-efficient of variance (CV) were not predictable. A histogram plotting the distribution of the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) values for 562 quantitative morphological phenotypes shows a significantly higher proportion of high AUC values than for 1,000 size-matched random gene sets. Separate analyses of phenotypes associated with morphologic features and phenotypes associated with cell-to-cell variability in the morphologic features reveals asymmetry in predictability. Sets of genes whose disruption causes the 40 largest or smallest mean values of a morphological feature (middle plots) are significantly more predictable than random gene sets (left side). By contrast, although the sets of genes whose disruption most increase the CV tend to be predictable (high AUC), those that most decrease the CV are not (low AUC). Box-and-whisker plots are drawn as in Figure 3. A comparison of the median phenotypic CVs observed for deletion strains versus replicate analyses of wild-type cells shows that deletion strains with the most reduced CVs are essentially wild-type-like in character, whereas those with the most increased CVs show significantly more cell-to-cell variability than wild-type cells. These latter knockout strains carry deletions for genes predominantly involved in maintaining genomic integrity. This trend is therefore likely to have arisen from nonclonal genetic variation in these strains, recapitulating the classic mutator phenotype

Yeast genes with human orthologs linked to the same diseases are predicted better than random expectation

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Broad network-based predictability of gene loss-of-function phenotypes"</p><p>http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/12/R258</p><p>Genome Biology 2007;8(12):R258-R258.</p><p>Published online 5 Dec 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2246260.</p><p></p> Predictability is measured as the area under a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), as in Figure 3, measuring the AUC for each of 28 human diseases reported in the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) disease database [51] that have four or more yeast orthologs annotated in the yeast function network and plotting the resulting AUC distributions. Real disease gene sets are significantly more predictable than size-matched random gene sets drawn from the set of yeast-human orthologs. Box plots are drawn as in Figure 3

Diverse yeast gene loss-of-function phenotypes are predictable using guilt-by-association in a functional gene network

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Broad network-based predictability of gene loss-of-function phenotypes"</p><p>http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/12/R258</p><p>Genome Biology 2007;8(12):R258-R258.</p><p>Published online 5 Dec 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2246260.</p><p></p> Predictability is measured in a receiver operating characteristic plot of the true positive rate (sensitivity) versus false positive rate (1 - specificity) for predicting genes giving rise to ten specific loss-of-function phenotypes, as well as for essential genes whose disruption produces nonviable yeast [4]. For each phenotype, each gene in the yeast genome was prioritized by the sum of the weights of its network linkages to the seed genes associated with the phenotype. Genes with higher scores are more tightly linked to the seed set and therefore more likely to give rise to the phenotype. Each phenotype was evaluated using leave-one-out cross-validation, omitting genes from the seed set for the purposes of evaluation. More predictable phenotypes tend toward the top-left corner of the graph; random predictability is indicated by the diagonal. For clarity, the line connecting the final point of each graph to the top right corner has been omitted. FN, false negative; FP, false positive; TN, true negative; TP, true positive

A plot of seed set size versus predictability of the phenotype shows no significant correlation

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Broad network-based predictability of gene loss-of-function phenotypes"</p><p>http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/12/R258</p><p>Genome Biology 2007;8(12):R258-R258.</p><p>Published online 5 Dec 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2246260.</p><p></p> Thus, there does not appear to be an intrinsic limitation for applying network-guided reverse genetics even when seed set size is small. Each filled circle indicates the prediction strength (area under the receiver operating characteristic [ROC] curve, as calculated in Figure 3) of one of the 100 loss-of-function phenotypes relative to the number of genes in that seed set