PLoS Computational Biology (Oct 2022)

Experimental guidance for discovering genetic networks through hypothesis reduction on time series.

  • Breschine Cummins,
  • Francis C Motta,
  • Robert C Moseley,
  • Anastasia Deckard,
  • Sophia Campione,
  • Marcio Gameiro,
  • Tomáš Gedeon,
  • Konstantin Mischaikow,
  • Steven B Haase

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010145
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 10
p. e1010145

Abstract

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Large programs of dynamic gene expression, like cell cyles and circadian rhythms, are controlled by a relatively small "core" network of transcription factors and post-translational modifiers, working in concerted mutual regulation. Recent work suggests that system-independent, quantitative features of the dynamics of gene expression can be used to identify core regulators. We introduce an approach of iterative network hypothesis reduction from time-series data in which increasingly complex features of the dynamic expression of individual, pairs, and entire collections of genes are used to infer functional network models that can produce the observed transcriptional program. The culmination of our work is a computational pipeline, Iterative Network Hypothesis Reduction from Temporal Dynamics (Inherent dynamics pipeline), that provides a priority listing of targets for genetic perturbation to experimentally infer network structure. We demonstrate the capability of this integrated computational pipeline on synthetic and yeast cell-cycle data.