Community structure of non-coding RNA interaction network

Abstract

Summary Rapid technological advances have shown that the ratio of non-protein coding genes rises to 98.5% in humans, suggesting that current knowledge on genetic information processing might be largely incomplete. It implies that protein-coding sequences only represent a small fraction of cellular transcriptional information. Here, we examine the community structure of the network defined by functional interactions between noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) and proteins related bio-macrolecules (PRMs) using a two-fold approach: modularity in bipartite network and k-clique community detection. First, the high modularity scores as well as the distribution of community sizes showing a scaling-law revealed manifestly non-random features. Second, the k-clique sub-graphs and overlaps show that the identified communities of the ncRNA molecules of H. sapiens can potentially be associated with certain functions. These findings highlight the complex modular structure of ncRNA interactions and its possible regulatory roles in the cell.