Variations in edge betweenness measure for gene regulatory networks

Abstract

Identifying important contributors, either transcription factor (TF) proteins or targeted genes, from gene regulatory networks (GRN) is a crucial task. A GRN can be represented by a directed graph where a vertex represents a gene and an edge represents a transcription factor protein. Several studies have reveled the modular composition of protein-protein interaction networks and GRNs. Importance of understanding the controlling mechanism within GRNs increases when studied under Cancer regulation. In this paper we discussed the significance of edges in GRN while considering it as directed graphs. Edge betweenness based global criteria is used to calculate scoring metric which is further used for data mining purposes. The analysis finally reveals underlying communities present within the directed gene regulatory network based on the importance of edges linking them. Finally, the community architecture of GRN is discussed in context of Cancer regulation.