Applications of Network Analysis in Biomedicine

Methods Mol Biol. 2020:2204:39-50. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0904-0_4.

Abstract

The abundance of high-throughput data and technical refinements in graph theories have allowed network analysis to become an effective approach for various medical fields. This chapter introduces co-expression, Bayesian, and regression-based network construction methods, which are the basis of network analysis. Various methods in network topology analysis are explained, along with their unique features and applications in biomedicine. Furthermore, we explain the role of network embedding in reducing the dimensionality of networks and outline several popular algorithms used by researchers today. Current literature has implemented different combinations of topology analysis and network embedding techniques, and we outline several studies in the fields of genetic-based disease prediction, drug-target identification, and multi-level omics integration.

Keywords: Heat diffusion; Multi-omics; Network analysis; Network embedding; Random walk.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Bayes Theorem
  • Biomedical Research / methods*
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Humans