The facebook of genes: community detection in biological networks

Background: In biology, many processes involve a group of genes that are expressed at the same time or a group of proteins that interact with each other. These interactions can be represented as networks and allow the identification of modules, which are groups of densely interconnected nodes (i.eg. genes or proteins). A module should regroup nodes that work in the same pathway or have a related function, thus allowing to understand better different biological processes, pathways and causes of disease.

Goal: To identify overlapping and non-overlapping modules in different biological networks.

Computational tools: For this project, we used the linkcomm R package to identify overlapping modules. We also created an algorithm to transform the results into a list of non-overlapping modules.

Keywords: community identification, biological networks, pathways

Supervisor: Daniel Marbach

Download project introduction slides

Students wiki: The facebook of genes