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bioRxiv · 10.1101/011056

Reverse enGENEering of regulatory networks from Big Data: a guide for a biologist

Andrey Morgun·Xiaoxi Dong·Anatoly Yambartsev·Stephen Ramsey·lina Thomas·Natalia Shulzhenko
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Abstract

Omics technologies enable unbiased investigation of biological systems through massively parallel sequence acquisition or molecular measurements, bringing the life sciences into the era of Big Data. A central challenge posed by such omics datasets is how to transform this data into biological knowledge. For example, how to use this data to answer questions such as: which functional pathways are involved in cell differentiation? Which genes should we target to stop cancer? Network analysis is a powerful and general approach to solve this problem consisting of two fundamental stages, network reconstruction and network interrogation. Herein, we provide an overview of network analysis including a step by step guide on how to perform and use this approach to investigate a biological question. In this guide, we also include the software packages that we and others employ for each of the steps of a network analysis workflow.

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Andrey Morgun, Xiaoxi Dong, Anatoly Yambartsev, Stephen Ramsey, lina Thomas, Natalia Shulzhenko. 2014-11-03. Reverse enGENEering of regulatory networks from Big Data: a guide for a biologist. https://doi.org/10.1101/011056

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