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Unraveling Protein Networks with Power Graph Analysis
PLoS Computational Biology (2008)
  • Loïc Royer, Technische Universität Dresden
  • Matthias Reimann, Technische Universität Dresden
  • Bill Andreopoulos, Technische Universität Dresden
  • Michael Schroeder, Technische Universität Dresden
Abstract
Networks play a crucial role in computational biology, yet their analysis and representation is still an open problem. Power Graph Analysis is a lossless transformation of biological networks into a compact, less redundant representation, exploiting the abundance of cliques and bicliques as elementary topological motifs. We demonstrate with five examples the advantages of Power Graph Analysis. Investigating protein-protein interaction networks, we show how the catalytic subunits of the casein kinase II complex are distinguishable from the regulatory subunits, how interaction profiles and sequence phylogeny of SH3 domains correlate, and how false positive interactions among high-throughput interactions are spotted. Additionally, we demonstrate the generality of Power Graph Analysis by applying it to two other types of networks. We show how power graphs induce a clustering of both transcription factors and target genes in bipartite transcription networks, and how the erosion of a phosphatase domain in type 22 non-receptor tyrosine phosphatases is detected. We apply Power Graph Analysis to high-throughput protein interaction networks and show that up to 85% (56% on average) of the information is redundant. Experimental networks are more compressible than rewired ones of same degree distribution, indicating that experimental networks are rich in cliques and bicliques. Power Graphs are a novel representation of networks, which reduces network complexity by explicitly representing re-occurring network motifs. Power Graphs compress up to 85% of the edges in protein interaction networks and are applicable to all types of networks such as protein interactions, regulatory networks, or homology networks.
Publication Date
July 11, 2008
DOI
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000108
Publisher Statement
This article originally appeared in: Royer, L., Reimann, M., Andreopoulos, B., and Schroeder, M. (2008). Unraveling Protein Networks with Power Graph Analysis. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(7): e1000108. Authors retain copyright. The article can also be found online at this link.

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Citation Information
Loïc Royer, Matthias Reimann, Bill Andreopoulos and Michael Schroeder. "Unraveling Protein Networks with Power Graph Analysis" PLoS Computational Biology Vol. 4 Iss. 7 (2008)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/william-andreopoulos/16/
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY International License.