A Bayesian framework for cell-level protein network analysis for multivariate proteomics image data

Abstract

The recent development of multivariate imaging techniques, such as the Toponome Imaging System (TIS), has facilitated the analysis of multiple co-localisation of proteins. This could hold the key to understanding complex phenomena such as protein-protein interaction in cancer. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian framework for cell level network analysis allowing the identification of several protein pairs having significantly higher co-expression levels in cancerous tissue samples when compared to normal colon tissue. It involves segmenting the DAPI-labeled image into cells and determining the cell phenotypes according to their protein-protein dependence profile. The cells are phenotyped using Gaussian Bayesian hierarchical clustering (GBHC) after feature selection is performed. The phenotypes are then analysed using Difference in Sums of Weighted cO-dependence Profiles (DiSWOP), which detects differences in the co-expression patterns of protein pairs. We demonstrate that the pairs highlighted by the proposed framework have high concordance with recent results using a different phenotyping method. This demonstrates that the results are independent of the clustering method used. In addition, the highlighted protein pairs are further analysed via protein interaction pathway databases and by considering the localization of high protein-protein dependence within individual samples. This suggests that the proposed approach could identify potentially functional protein complexes active in cancer progression and cell differentiation.