BRANE Cut: biologically-related a priori network enhancement with graph cuts for gene regulatory network inference

Inferring and analyzing gene regulatory networks from multi-factorial expression data: a complete and interactive suite

Background

High-throughput transcriptomic datasets are often examined to discover new actors and regulators of a biological response. To this end, graphical interfaces have been developed and allow a broad range of users to conduct standard analyses from RNA-seq data, even with little programming experience. Although existing solutions usually provide adequate procedures for normalization, exploration or differential expression, more advanced features, such as gene clustering or regulatory network inference, often miss or do not reflect current state of the art methodologies.

Results

We developed here a user interface called DIANE (Dashboard for the Inference and Analysis of Networks from Expression data) designed to harness the potential of multi-factorial expression datasets from any organisms through a precise set of methods. DIANE interactive workflow provides normalization, dimensionality reduction, differential expression and ontology enrichment. Gene clustering can be performed and explored via configurable Mixture Models, and Random Forests are used to infer gene regulatory networks. DIANE also includes a novel procedure to assess the statistical significance of regulator-target influence measures based on permutations for Random Forest importance metrics. All along the pipeline, session reports and results can be downloaded to ensure clear and reproducible analyses.

Conclusions

We demonstrate the value and the benefits of DIANE using a recently published data set describing the transcriptional response of Arabidopsis thaliana under the combination of temperature, drought and salinity perturbations. We show that DIANE can intuitively carry out informative exploration and statistical procedures with RNA-Seq data, perform model based gene expression profiles clustering and go further into gene network reconstruction, providing relevant candidate genes or signalling pathways to explore. DIANE is available as a web service (https://diane.bpmp.inrae.fr), or can be installed and locally launched as a complete R package.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at (10.1186/s12864-021-07659-2).

Glucose-lactose mixture feeds in industry-like conditions: a gene regulatory network analysis on the hyperproducing Trichoderma reesei strain Rut-C30

BACKGROUND

The degradation of cellulose and hemicellulose molecules into simpler sugars such as glucose is part of the second generation biofuel production process. Hydrolysis of lignocellulosic substrates is usually performed by enzymes produced and secreted by the fungus Trichoderma reesei. Studies identifying transcription factors involved in the regulation of cellulase production have been conducted but no overview of the whole regulation network is available. A transcriptomic approach with mixtures of glucose and lactose, used as a substrate for cellulase induction, was used to help us decipher missing parts in the network of T. reesei Rut-C30.

RESULTS

Experimental results on the Rut-C30 hyperproducing strain confirmed the impact of sugar mixtures on the enzymatic cocktail composition. The transcriptomic study shows a temporal regulation of the main transcription factors and a lactose concentration impact on the transcriptional profile. A gene regulatory network built using BRANE Cut software reveals three sub-networks related to i) a positive correlation between lactose concentration and cellulase production, ii) a particular dependence of the lactose onto the β-glucosidase regulation and iii) a negative regulation of the development process and growth.

CONCLUSIONS

This work is the first investigating a transcriptomic study regarding the effects of pure and mixed carbon sources in a fed-batch mode. Our study expose a co-orchestration of xyr1, clr2 and ace3 for cellulase and hemicellulase induction and production, a fine regulation of the β-glucosidase and a decrease of growth in favor of cellulase production. These conclusions provide us with potential targets for further genetic engineering leading to better cellulase-producing strains in industry-like conditions.

Systems Bioinformatics: increasing precision of computational diagnostics and therapeutics through network-based approaches

Systems Bioinformatics is a relatively new approach, which lies in the intersection of systems biology and classical bioinformatics. It focuses on integrating information across different levels using a bottom-up approach as in systems biology with a data-driven top-down approach as in bioinformatics. The advent of omics technologies has provided the stepping-stone for the emergence of Systems Bioinformatics. These technologies provide a spectrum of information ranging from genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics to epigenomics, pharmacogenomics, metagenomics and metabolomics. Systems Bioinformatics is the framework in which systems approaches are applied to such data, setting the level of resolution as well as the boundary of the system of interest and studying the emerging properties of the system as a whole rather than the sum of the properties derived from the system's individual components. A key approach in Systems Bioinformatics is the construction of multiple networks representing each level of the omics spectrum and their integration in a layered network that exchanges information within and between layers. Here, we provide evidence on how Systems Bioinformatics enhances computational therapeutics and diagnostics, hence paving the way to precision medicine. The aim of this review is to familiarize the reader with the emerging field of Systems Bioinformatics and to provide a comprehensive overview of its current state-of-the-art methods and technologies. Moreover, we provide examples of success stories and case studies that utilize such methods and tools to significantly advance research in the fields of systems biology and systems medicine.

BRANE Clust: Cluster-Assisted Gene Regulatory Network Inference Refinement

Discovering meaningful gene interactions is crucial for the identification of novel regulatory processes in cells. Building accurately the related graphs remains challenging due to the large number of possible solutions from available data. Nonetheless, enforcing a priori on the graph structure, such as modularity, may reduce network indeterminacy issues. BRANE Clust (Biologically-Related A priori Network Enhancement with Clustering) refines gene regulatory network (GRN) inference thanks to cluster information. It works as a post-processing tool for inference methods (i.e., CLR, GENIE3). In BRANE Clust, the clustering is based on the inversion of a system of linear equations involving a graph-Laplacian matrix promoting a modular structure. Our approach is validated on DREAM4 and DREAM5 datasets with objective measures, showing significant comparative improvements. We provide additional insights on the discovery of novel regulatory or co-expressed links in the inferred Escherichia coli network evaluated using the STRING database. The comparative pertinence of clustering is discussed computationally (SIMoNe, WGCNA, X-means) and biologically (RegulonDB). BRANE Clust software is available at: http://www-syscom.univ-mlv.fr/~pirayre/Codes-GRN-BRANE-clust.html.

Enhancing gene regulatory network inference through data integration with markov random fields

A gene regulatory network links transcription factors to their target genes and represents a map of transcriptional regulation. Much progress has been made in deciphering gene regulatory networks computationally. However, gene regulatory network inference for most eukaryotic organisms remain challenging. To improve the accuracy of gene regulatory network inference and facilitate candidate selection for experimentation, we developed an algorithm called GRACE (Gene Regulatory network inference ACcuracy Enhancement). GRACE exploits biological a priori and heterogeneous data integration to generate high- confidence network predictions for eukaryotic organisms using Markov Random Fields in a semi-supervised fashion. GRACE uses a novel optimization scheme to integrate regulatory evidence and biological relevance. It is particularly suited for model learning with sparse regulatory gold standard data. We show GRACE’s potential to produce high confidence regulatory networks compared to state of the art approaches using Drosophila melanogaster and Arabidopsis thaliana data. In an A. thaliana developmental gene regulatory network, GRACE recovers cell cycle related regulatory mechanisms and further hypothesizes several novel regulatory links, including a putative control mechanism of vascular structure formation due to modifications in cell proliferation.