Network spectra for drug-target identification in complex diseases: new guns against old foes

Abstract

Abstract The fundamental understanding of altered complex molecular interactions in a diseased condition is the key to its cure. The overall functioning of these molecules is kind of jugglers play in the cell orchestra and to anticipate these relationships among the molecules is one of the greatest challenges in modern biology and medicine. Network science turned out to be providing a successful and simple platform to understand complex interactions among healthy and diseased tissues. Furthermore, much information about the structure and dynamics of a network is concealed in the eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix. In this review, we illustrate rapid advancements in the field of network science in combination with spectral graph theory that enables us to uncover the complexities of various diseases. Interpretations laid by network science approach have solicited insights into molecular relationships and have reported novel drug targets and biomarkers in various complex diseases.

Keywords

• Disease networks
• Network spectra
• Biomarkers
• Random matrix theory (RMT)
• Systems biology