Genomic instruments help to find Driver nodes in co-expression networks

One of the most important challenges in systems biology approaches has been finding driver nodes in network systems. The driver nodes are those who start the cascade of subsequent tiny changes to eventually reshape the whole system towards a new manner. These nodes can be used to engineer the system to yield significant and predictable impact and therefore are the best targets for drug design (۱,۲). Among different biological networks, co-expression networks have a special place as expression is almost always prior to other cellular changes. There are large-scale publicly available data sets from different tissues which are frequently used in network construction and analysis; however, focusing on the driver nodes is less studied in this field.

Keywords:

Driver nodes , network , systems biology , Mendelian Randomization , co-expression.