Network deconvolution as a general method to distinguish direct dependencies in networks.

Nat Biotechnol
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Recognizing direct relationships between variables connected in a network is a pervasive problem in biological, social and information sciences as correlation-based networks contain numerous indirect relationships. Here we present a general method for inferring direct effects from an observed correlation matrix containing both direct and indirect effects. We formulate the problem as the inverse of network convolution, and introduce an algorithm that removes the combined effect of all indirect paths of arbitrary length in a closed-form solution by exploiting eigen-decomposition and infinite-series sums. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in several network applications: distinguishing direct targets in gene expression regulatory networks; recognizing directly interacting amino-acid residues for protein structure prediction from sequence alignments; and distinguishing strong collaborations in co-authorship social networks using connectivity information alone. In addition to its theoretical impact as a foundational graph theoretic tool, our results suggest network deconvolution is widely applicable for computing direct dependencies in network science across diverse disciplines.

Year of Publication
2013
Journal
Nat Biotechnol
Volume
31
Issue
8
Pages
726-33
Date Published
2013 Aug
ISSN
1546-1696
URL
DOI
10.1038/nbt.2635
PubMed ID
23851448
PubMed Central ID
PMC3773370
Links
Grant list
R01 HG004037 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
RC1 HG005334 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
RC2 HG005639 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
HG005639 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States