Predicting Homologous Signaling Pathways Using Machine Learning

Babak Bostan, Russell Greiner, Duane Szafron and Paul Lu

Bioinformatics 2009; doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btp532

(Download via Bioinformatics)

 

Abstract:

Motivation: In general, each cell signaling pathway involves many proteins, each with one or more specific roles. As they are essential components of cell activity, it is important to understand how these proteins work - and in particular, to determine which of a species' proteins participate in each role. Experimentally determining this mapping of proteins to roles is difficult and time consuming. Fortunately, many pathways are similar across species, so we may be able to use known pathway information of one species to understand the corresponding pathway of another.

Results: We present an automatic approach, Predict Signaling Pathway (PSP), that uses the signaling pathways in well-studied species to predict the roles of proteins in less-studied species. We use a machine learning approach to create a predictor that achieves a generalization F-measure of 78.2% when applied to 11 different pathways across 14 different species. We also show our approach is very effective in predicting the pathways that have not yet been experimentally studied completely.

 

 

Training datasets:

 

á      Homo sapiens (human) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee)  (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Macaca mulatta (monkey) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Mus musculus (mouse) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Rattus norvegicus (rat) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Canis familiaris (dog) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Bos taurus (cow) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Sus scrofa (pig) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Monodelphis domestica (opossum) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Ornithorhynchus anatinus (platypus) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Gallus sallus (chicken) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Xenopus laevis (African clawed frog) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Xenopus tropicalis (western clawed frog) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

á      Danio rerio (zegrafish) (gene list, pathways (MAPK, ErbB, Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, TGF-beta, VEGF, Jak-STAT, Calcium, Phosphatidylinositol, mTOR) )

 

Prediction output:

á      Sorted by species

á      Sorted by nodes