Pathway Network Analysis in Systems Biology

PONZONI, IGNACIO; DOPAZO, JOAQUIN; CONESA, ANA

Cádiz, España

Conferencia; XII Spanish Conference on Biometrics; 2009

Sociedad Española de Biometría

Systems Biology discipline focus the study of biology as the compendium of molecular systems that operate in an interconnected and coordinated way. The development of high-throughput omics technologies such as DNA microarrays enabled genome-wide measurements of the activity of cellular elements and provides the first analytical resources for the establishment of the Systems Biology orientation. Thus, analysis and interpretation of microarray gene expression data has evolved from the gene to the pathway and interaction level, i.e. from the detection of differentially expressed genes, to the establishment of gene interaction networks and the identification of enriched functional categories. Still, the understanding of the biological systems requires a higher level of study, which would be characterized by the interaction between functional modules. In this paper we present a novel methodological approach to data analysis in Systems Biology which enables the definition of networks of relationships between molecular pathways and the study of their changes across experimental situations. The method has been developed for gene expression data but could be easily extended to other types of molecular high-throughput measurements.