Co-expression Network Approach Reveals Functional Similarities among Diseases Affecting Human Skeletal Muscle.

ABSTRACT: Diseases affecting skeletal muscle exhibit considerable heterogeneity in intensity, etiology, phenotypic manifestation and gene expression. Systems biology approaches using network theory, allows for a holistic understanding of functional similarities amongst diseases. Here we propose a co-expression based, network theoretic approach to extract functional similarities from 20 heterogeneous diseases comprising of dystrophinopathies, inflammatory myopathies, neuromuscular, and muscle metabolic diseases. Utilizing this framework we identified seven closely associated disease clusters with 20 disease pairs exhibiting significant correlation (p < 0.05). Mapping the diseases onto a human protein-protein interaction network enabled the inference of a common program of regulation underlying

SUBMITTER: Mukund K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5717538 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature