bioRxiv ScienceSearch

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.01.03.893743

NetCombin: An algorithm for optimal level-k network construction from triplets

Abstract

Phylogenetic networks construction is one the most important challenge in phylogenetics. These networks can present complex non-treelike events such as gene flow, horizontal gene transfers, recombination or hybridizations. Among phylogenetic networks, rooted structures are commonly used to represent the evolutionary history of a species set, explicitly. Triplets are well known input for constructing the rooted networks. Obtaining an optimal rooted network that contains all given triplets is main problem in network construction. The optimality criteria include minimizing the level and the number of reticulation nodes. The complexity of this problem is known to be NP-hard. In this research, a new algorithm called Netcombin is introduced to construct an optimal network which is consistent with input triplets. The innovation of this algorithm is based on binarization and expanding processes. The binarization process innovatively uses a measure to construct a binary rooted tree T consistent with the maximum number of input triplets. Then T is expanded in an intellectual process by adding minimum number of edges to obtain final network with the minimum number of reticulation nodes. In order to evaluate the proposed algorithm, NetCombin is compared with four state of the art algorithms, RPNCH, NCHB, TripNet, and SIMPLISTIC. The experimental results on real data indicate that by considering the trade-off between speed and precision, the NetCombin outperforms the others. Author summaryHadi Poormohammadi got his PhD in Mathematics, Applied combinatorics from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran in 2013. He is now working as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Computer Engineering, Meybod University. His research interests include Combinatorics, Graph theory and Bioinformatics. Mohsen Sardari Zarchi got his PhD in computer engineering, Artificial Intelligence from University of Isfahan in 2015. He is now working as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Computer Engineering, Meybod University. His research interests include Deep learning, Image processing, Artificial intelligence and Bioinformatics.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Poormohammadi, H., Sardari Zarchi, M.. 2020-01-06. NetCombin: An algorithm for optimal level-k network construction from triplets. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.03.893743

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

spatialMET: an open and scalable framework for spatial metabolomics analysis

Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) enables spatially resolved metabolomics in intact tissue sections, but analysis remains challenging at scale. Existing MSI workflows often require users to combine multiple software tools, while others rely on proprietary vendor software that limits interoperability and reproducibility. To address these challenges, we developed spatialMET, an open-source framework that provides an end-to-end workflow for MSI analysis. spatialMET provides a unified platform for preprocessing, spatial domain detection, and visualization. Downstream analyses include differential abundance testing, spatial autocorrelation and gradient analysis, dimensionality reduction, and correlation network analysis. Spatial domain detection uses hcdist, a C-based hierarchical clustering implementation that substantially reduces runtime and memory use relative to existing R-based approaches. spatialMET can be run through an interactive R Shiny application or as a standalone command-line workflow for larger datasets or high-performance computing environments. Applied to mouse small cell lung cancer MALDI-MSI data containing 284,673 pixels, spatialMET identified tumor-associated, stromal, and adjacent lung spatial domains that aligned with matched histology. Differential abundance analysis identified 117 m/z features that differed between tumor and stromal regions, while spatial autocorrelation analyses revealed spatially structured abundance patterns. Applying spatialMET to mouse lung adenocarcinoma data from an entire lung lobe containing 338,477 pixels further demonstrated scalability and captured spatial heterogeneity across tumor and surrounding lung tissue. In summary, spatialMET provides a scalable, open-source framework for end-to-end spatial metabolomics analysis, and it is distributed as a Docker container for reproducible deployment. Source code and installation instructions are available at https://github.com/biodatalab/spatialMET.

bioinformatics

Probing the transcriptome response to shivering in skeletal muscle using a multilayered bioinformatics approach

Cold acclimation holds therapeutic potential for improving metabolic health. We previously demonstrated that repeated cold-induced shivering enhances insulin sensitivity in humans. However, the molecular pathways that underlie the skeletal muscle shivering response, and how these relate to beneficial physiological effects, remain poorly understood. In this study, we combined complementary bioinformatics approaches to allow in-depth analysis of the transcriptomic response of human skeletal muscle to repeated shivering. We identified a robust transcriptional signature and show a sex-specific component in the shivering skeletal muscle response, which seemed to diminish following cold adaptation. Our findings provide mechanistic insights into cold-induced muscle adaptations, shed light on potential interesting molecular targets for further investigation, and emphasize the importance of including both sexes in future cold acclimation studies.

bioinformatics

An Information Geometry approach to model topological trajectories and Gene Expression Radius from UMAP geometry.

Understanding the relationship between gene expression dynamics and cellular identity remains a central challenge in single cell biology. Here, we introduce a novel computational and mathematical framework that integrates information geometry, fuzzy topology, and UMAP analysis to model gene expression landscapes derived from single cell RNA sequencing data. We formalize gene expression data as a fuzzy topological space, where interactions between expression points are governed by probabilistic distributions inspired by manifold learning approaches such as UMAP. Within this framework, we define an information geometric structure through a Fisher metric induced by these distributions, enabling the computation of geodesic trajectories that capture cellular differentiation processes. A key contribution of this work is the derivation of analytical conditions, expressed as expression radius formulas, that characterize local neighborhoods in gene expression space. These conditions allow for the identification of genes associated with stem cell states and predictions in transitional cell types in future work. Application of the proposed framework to single cell datasets reveals biologically meaningful gene sets enriched in key regulatory pathways and transcription factors, demonstrating the capacity of our approach to uncover latent structure in complex gene expression data. Our results suggest that integrating differential geometry with statistical learning theory offers a powerful paradigm for modeling genotype and phenotype relationships and cellular state transitions, with potential implications for precision medicine and systems biology.

bioinformatics