Network fingerprint: a knowledge-based characterization of biomedical networks

It can be difficult for biomedical researchers to understand complex molecular networks due to their unfamiliarity with the mathematical concepts employed. To represent molecular networks with clear meanings and familiar forms for biomedical researchers, we introduce a knowledge-based computational framework to decipher biomedical networks by making systematic comparisons to well-studied “basic networks”. A biomedical network is characterized as a spectrum-like vector called “network fingerprint”, which contains similarities to basic networks. This knowledge-based multidimensional characterization provides a more intuitive way to decipher molecular networks, especially for large-scale network comparisons and clustering analyses. As an example, we extracted network fingerprints of 44 disease networks in the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database. The comparisons among the network fingerprints of disease networks revealed informative disease-disease and disease-signaling pathway associations, illustrating that the network fingerprinting framework will lead to new approaches for better understanding of biomedical networks.