Inferring gene regulatory networks from time series data using the minimum description length principle

  • Authors:
  • Wentao Zhao;Erchin Serpedin;Edward R. Dougherty

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3128, USA;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3128, USA;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3128, USA

  • Venue:
  • Bioinformatics
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Motivation: A central question in reverse engineering of genetic networks consists in determining the dependencies and regulating relationships among genes. This paper addresses the problem of inferring genetic regulatory networks from time-series gene-expression profiles. By adopting a probabilistic modeling framework compatible with the family of models represented by dynamic Bayesian networks and probabilistic Boolean networks, this paper proposes a network inference algorithm to recover not only the direct gene connectivity but also the regulating orientations. Results: Based on the minimum description length principle, a novel network inference algorithm is proposed that greatly shrinks the search space for graphical solutions and achieves a good trade-off between modeling complexity and data fitting. Simulation results show that the algorithm achieves good performance in the case of synthetic networks. Compared with existing state-of-the-art results in the literature, the proposed algorithm exceptionally excels in efficiency, accuracy, robustness and scalability. Given a time-series dataset for Drosophila melanogaster, the paper proposes a genetic regulatory network involved in Drosophila's muscle development. Availability: Available from the authors upon request. Contact: wtzhao@ece.tamu.edu