A survey on biomarker identification based on molecular networks

Abstract

Background: Identifying biomarkers for accurate diagnosis and prognosis of diseases is important for the prevention of disease development. The molecular networks that describe the functional relationships among molecules provide a global view of the complex biological systems. With the molecular networks, the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases can be unveiled, which helps identify biomarkers in a systematic way.

Results: In this survey, we report the recent progress on identifying biomarkers based on the topology of molecular networks, and we categorize those biomarkers into three groups, including node biomarkers, edge biomarkers and network biomarkers. These distinct types of biomarkers can be detected under different conditions depending on the data available.

Conclusions: The biomarkers identified based on molecular networks can provide more accurate diagnosis and prognosis. The pros and cons of different types of biomarkers as well as future directions to improve the methods for identifying biomarkers are also discussed.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

biomarker / molecular network / module / pathway

References

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was partly supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 91530321, 61390513, 61602347 and 61572363), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICS GUIDELINES

The authors Guanghui Zhu, Xing-Ming Zhao, and Jun Wu declare that they have no conflict of interests.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg