Module Anchored Network Inference: A Sequential Module-Based Approach to Novel Gene Network Construction from Genomic Expression Data on Human Disease Mechanism

Different computational approaches have been examined and compared for inferring network relationships from time-series genomic data on human disease mechanisms under the recent Dialogue on Reverse Engineering Assessment and Methods (DREAM) challenge. Many of these approaches infer all possible relationships among all candidate genes, often resulting in extremely crowded candidate network relationships with many more False Positives than True Positives. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a novel approach, Module Anchored Network Inference (MANI), that constructs networks by analyzing sequentially small adjacent building blocks (modules). Using MANI, we inferred a 7-gene adipogenesis network based on time-series gene expression data during adipocyte differentiation. MANI was also applied to infer two 10-gene networks based on time-course perturbation datasets from DREAM3 and DREAM4 challenges. MANI well inferred and distinguished serial, parallel, and time-dependent gene interactions and network cascades in these applications showing a superior performance to other in silico network inference techniques for discovering and reconstructing gene network relationships.