scholarly journals SimiC: A Single Cell Gene Regulatory Network Inference method with Similarity Constraints

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianhao Peng ◽  
Ullas V. Chembazhi ◽  
Sushant Bangru ◽  
Ian M. Traniello ◽  
Auinash Kalsotra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Regional Analysis ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Inference Method ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Inference Problem ◽  
Cell State ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
Inference Methods

AbstractMotivationWith the use of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) technologies, it is now possible to acquire gene expression data for each individual cell in samples containing up to millions of cells. These cells can be further grouped into different states along an inferred cell differentiation path, which are potentially characterized by similar, but distinct enough, gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Hence, it would be desirable for scRNA-Seq GRN inference methods to capture the GRN dynamics across cell states. However, current GRN inference methods produce a unique GRN per input dataset (or independent GRNs per cell state), failing to capture these regulatory dynamics.ResultsWe propose a novel single-cell GRN inference method, named SimiC, that jointly infers the GRNs corresponding to each state. SimiC models the GRN inference problem as a LASSO optimization problem with an added similarity constraint, on the GRNs associated to contiguous cell states, that captures the inter-cell-state homogeneity. We show on a mouse hepatocyte single-cell data generated after partial hepatectomy that, contrary to previous GRN methods for scRNA-Seq data, SimiC is able to capture the transcription factor (TF) dynamics across liver regeneration, as well as the cell-level behavior for the regulatory program of each TF across cell states. In addition, on a honey bee scRNA-Seq experiment, SimiC is able to capture the increased heterogeneity of cells on whole-brain tissue with respect to a regional analysis tissue, and the TFs associated specifically to each sequenced tissue.AvailabilitySimiC is written in Python and includes an R API. It can be downloaded from https://github.com/jianhao2016/[email protected], [email protected] informationSupplementary data are available at the code repository.

scholarly journals Identifying strengths and weaknesses of methods for computational network inference from single cell RNA-seq data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Stone ◽  
Sunnie Grace McCalla ◽  
Alireza Fotuhi Siahpirani ◽  
Viswesh Periyasamy ◽  
Junha Shin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Rna Sequencing ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network ◽  
Regulatory Network ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
Inference Methods

Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) offers unparalleled insight into the transcriptional pro- grams of different cellular states by measuring the transcriptome of thousands individual cells. An emerging problem in the analysis of scRNA-seq is the inference of transcriptional gene regulatory net- works and a number of methods with different learning frameworks have been developed. Here we present a expanded benchmarking study of eleven recent network inference methods on six published single-cell RNA-sequencing datasets in human, mouse, and yeast considering different types of gold standard networks and evaluation metrics. We evaluate methods based on their computing requirements as well as on their ability to recover the network structure. We find that while no method is a universal winner and most methods have a modest recovery of experimentally derived interactions based on global metrics such as AUPR, methods are able to capture targets of regulators that are relevant to the system under study. Based on overall performance we grouped the methods into three main categories and found a combination of information-theoretic and regression-based methods to have a generally high perfor- mance. We also evaluate the utility of imputation for gene regulatory network inference and find that a small number of methods benefit from imputation, which further depends upon the dataset. Finally, comparisons to inferred networks for comparable bulk conditions showed that networks inferred from scRNA-seq datasets are often better or at par to those from bulk suggesting that scRNA-seq datasets can be a cost-effective way for gene regulatory network inference. Our analysis should be beneficial in selecting algorithms for performing network inference but also argues for improved methods and better gold standards for accurate assessment of regulatory network inference methods for mammalian systems.

scholarly journals Evaluating the reproducibility of single-cell gene regulatory network inference algorithms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoonjee Kang ◽  
Denis Thieffry ◽  
Laura Cantini
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Simulated Data ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Sequencing Platform ◽  
Cell Network ◽  
Inference Algorithms ◽  
Inference Methods

AbstractNetworks are powerful tools to represent and investigate biological systems. The development of algorithms inferring regulatory interactions from functional genomics data has been an active area of research. With the advent of single-cell RNA-seq data (scRNA-seq), numerous methods specifically designed to take advantage of single-cell datasets have been proposed. However, published benchmarks on single-cell network inference are mostly based on simulated data. Once applied to real data, these benchmarks take into account only a small set of genes and only compare the inferred networks with an imposed ground-truth.Here, we benchmark four single-cell network inference methods based on their reproducibility, i.e. their ability to infer similar networks when applied to two independent datasets for the same biological condition. We tested each of these methods on real data from three biological conditions: human retina, T-cells in colorectal cancer, and human hematopoiesis.GENIE3 results to be the most reproducible algorithm, independently from the single-cell sequencing platform, the cell type annotation system, the number of cells constituting the dataset, or the thresholding applied to the links of the inferred networks. In order to ensure the reproducibility and ease extensions of this benchmark study, we implemented all the analyses in scNET, a Jupyter notebook available at https://github.com/ComputationalSystemsBiology/scNET.

scholarly journals BRANE Cut: Biologically-Related A priori Network Enhancement with Graph cuts for Gene Regulatory Network Inference

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurélie Pirayre ◽  
Camille Couprie ◽  
Frédérique Bidard ◽  
Laurent Duval ◽  
Jean-Christophe Pesquet
Keyword(s):  
Gene Regulatory Network ◽  
Regulatory Network ◽  
Gene Networks ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Graph Cuts ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
Inference Methods

Background: Inferring gene networks from high-throughput data constitutes an important step in the discovery of relevant regulatory relationships in organism cells. Despite the large number of available Gene Regulatory Network inference methods, the problem remains challenging: the underdetermination in the space of possible solutions requires additional constraints that incorporate a priori information on gene interactions. Methods: Weighting all possible pairwise gene relationships by a probability of edge presence, we formulate the regulatory network inference as a discrete variational problem on graphs. We enforce biologically plausible coupling between groups and types of genes by minimizing an edge labeling functional coding for a priori structures. The optimization is carried out with Graph cuts, an approach popular in image processing and computer vision. We compare the inferred regulatory networks to results achieved by the mutual-information-based Context Likelihood of Relatedness (CLR) method and by the state-of-the-art GENIE3, winner of the DREAM4 multifactorial challenge. Results: Our BRANE Cut approach infers more accurately the five DREAM4 in silico networks (with improvements from 6% to 11%). On a real Escherichia coli compendium, an improvement of 11.8% compared to CLR and 3% compared to GENIE3 is obtained in terms of Area Under Precision-Recall curve. Up to 48 additional verified interactions are obtained over GENIE3 for a given precision. On this dataset involving 4345 genes, our method achieves a performance similar to that of GENIE3, while being more than seven times faster. The BRANE Cut code is available at: http://www-syscom.univ-mlv.fr/~pirayre/Codes-GRN-BRANE-cut.html Conclusions: BRANE Cut is a weighted graph thresholding method. Using biologically sound penalties and data-driven parameters, it improves three state-of-the-art GRN inference methods. It is applicable as a generic network inference post-processing, due its computational efficiency.

scholarly journals Benchmarking algorithms for gene regulatory network inference from single-cell transcriptomic data

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditya Pratapa ◽  
Amogh P. Jalihal ◽  
Jeffrey N. Law ◽  
Aditya Bharadwaj ◽  
T. M. Murali
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network ◽  
Regulatory Network ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Transcriptomic Data ◽  
Gene Regulatory

PoLoBag: Polynomial Lasso Bagging for signed gene regulatory network inference from expression data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gourab Ghosh Roy ◽  
Nicholas Geard ◽  
Karin Verspoor ◽  
Shan He
Keyword(s):  
Gene Regulatory Networks ◽  
Regulatory Networks ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Regulatory Interactions ◽  
Inference Algorithms ◽  
Gene Regulatory

Abstract Motivation Inferring gene regulatory networks (GRNs) from expression data is a significant systems biology problem. A useful inference algorithm should not only unveil the global structure of the regulatory mechanisms but also the details of regulatory interactions such as edge direction (from regulator to target) and sign (activation/inhibition). Many popular GRN inference algorithms cannot infer edge signs, and those that can infer signed GRNs cannot simultaneously infer edge directions or network cycles. Results To address these limitations of existing algorithms, we propose Polynomial Lasso Bagging (PoLoBag) for signed GRN inference with both edge directions and network cycles. PoLoBag is an ensemble regression algorithm in a bagging framework where Lasso weights estimated on bootstrap samples are averaged. These bootstrap samples incorporate polynomial features to capture higher-order interactions. Results demonstrate that PoLoBag is consistently more accurate for signed inference than state-of-the-art algorithms on simulated and real-world expression datasets. Availability and implementation Algorithm and data are freely available at https://github.com/gourabghoshroy/PoLoBag. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

scholarly journals Optimal design of gene knockout experiments for gene regulatory network inference

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 875-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Minhaz Ud-Dean ◽  
Rudiyanto Gunawan
Keyword(s):  
Gene Regulatory Network ◽  
Biological Networks ◽  
Regulatory Network ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Gene Knockout ◽  
Directed Graphs ◽  
Gene Interaction ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Gene Regulatory

Abstract Motivation: We addressed the problem of inferring gene regulatory network (GRN) from gene expression data of knockout (KO) experiments. This inference is known to be underdetermined and the GRN is not identifiable from data. Past studies have shown that suboptimal design of experiments (DOE) contributes significantly to the identifiability issue of biological networks, including GRNs. However, optimizing DOE has received much less attention than developing methods for GRN inference. Results: We developed REDuction of UnCertain Edges (REDUCE) algorithm for finding the optimal gene KO experiment for inferring directed graphs (digraphs) of GRNs. REDUCE employed ensemble inference to define uncertain gene interactions that could not be verified by prior data. The optimal experiment corresponds to the maximum number of uncertain interactions that could be verified by the resulting data. For this purpose, we introduced the concept of edge separatoid which gave a list of nodes (genes) that upon their removal would allow the verification of a particular gene interaction. Finally, we proposed a procedure that iterates over performing KO experiments, ensemble update and optimal DOE. The case studies including the inference of Escherichia coli GRN and DREAM 4 100-gene GRNs, demonstrated the efficacy of the iterative GRN inference. In comparison to systematic KOs, REDUCE could provide much higher information return per gene KO experiment and consequently more accurate GRN estimates. Conclusions: REDUCE represents an enabling tool for tackling the underdetermined GRN inference. Along with advances in gene deletion and automation technology, the iterative procedure brings an efficient and fully automated GRN inference closer to reality. Availability and implementation: MATLAB and Python scripts of REDUCE are available on www.cabsel.ethz.ch/tools/REDUCE. Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

scholarly journals SCENIC: Single-cell regulatory network inference and clustering

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Aibar ◽  
Carmen Bravo González-Blas ◽  
Thomas Moerman ◽  
Jasper Wouters ◽  
Vân Anh Huynh-Thu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Transcription Factors ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Regulatory Network ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Target Genes ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
State Transitions ◽  
Rna Seq ◽  
Cell State ◽  
Gene Regulatory

AbstractSingle-cell RNA-seq allows building cell atlases of any given tissue and infer the dynamics of cellular state transitions during developmental or disease trajectories. Both the maintenance and transitions of cell states are encoded by regulatory programs in the genome sequence. However, this regulatory code has not yet been exploited to guide the identification of cellular states from single-cell RNA-seq data. Here we describe a computational resource, called SCENIC (Single Cell rEgulatory Network Inference and Clustering), for the simultaneous reconstruction of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and the identification of stable cell states, using single-cell RNA-seq data. SCENIC outperforms existing approaches at the level of cell clustering and transcription factor identification. Importantly, we show that cell state identification based on GRNs is robust towards batch-effects and technical-biases. We applied SCENIC to a compendium of single-cell data from the mouse and human brain and demonstrate that the proper combinations of transcription factors, target genes, enhancers, and cell types can be identified. Moreover, we used SCENIC to map the cell state landscape in melanoma and identified a gene regulatory network underlying a proliferative melanoma state driven by MITF and STAT and a contrasting network controlling an invasive state governed by NFATC2 and NFIB. We further validated these predictions by showing that two transcription factors are predominantly expressed in early metastatic sentinel lymph nodes. In summary, SCENIC is the first method to analyze scRNA-seq data using a network-centric, rather than cell-centric approach. SCENIC is generic, easy to use, and flexible, and allows for the simultaneous tracing of genomic regulatory programs and the mapping of cellular identities emerging from these programs. Availability: SCENIC is available as an R workflow based on three new R/Bioconductor packages: GENIE3, RcisTarget and AUCell. As scalable alternative to GENIE3, we also provide GRNboost, paving the way towards the network analysis across millions of single cells.

scholarly journals Benchmarking imputation methods for network inference using a novel method of synthetic scRNA-seq data generation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayoub Lasri ◽  
Vahid Shahrezaei ◽  
Marc Sturrock
Keyword(s):  
Single Cell ◽  
Gene Regulatory Networks ◽  
Regulatory Networks ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Imputation Methods ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
The Impact

Single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) has very rapidly become the new workhorse of modern biology providing an unprecedented global view on cellular diversity and heterogeneity. In particular, the structure of gene-gene expression correlation contains information on the underlying gene regulatory networks. However, interpretation of scRNA-seq data is challenging due to specific experimental error and biases that are unique to this kind of data including drop-out (or technical zeros). To deal with this problem several methods for imputation of zeros for scRNA-seq have been developed. However, it is not clear how these processing steps affect inference of genetic networks from single cell data. Here, we introduce Biomodelling.jl, a tool for generation of synthetic scRNA-seq data using multiscale modelling of stochastic gene regulatory networks in growing and dividing cells. Our tool produces realistic transcription data with a known ground truth network topology that can be used to benchmark different approaches for gene regulatory network inference. Using this tool we investigate the impact of different imputation methods on the performance of several network inference algorithms. Biomodelling.jl provides a versatile and useful tool for future development and benchmarking of network inference approaches using scRNA-seq data.

scholarly journals Gene regulatory network inference from single-cell data using multivariate information measures

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thalia E. Chan ◽  
Michael P.H. Stumpf ◽  
Ann C. Babtie
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Information Theory ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Network Inference ◽  
Gene Regulatory Network Inference ◽  
Functional Relationships ◽  
Cell Gene Expression ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
Cell Data ◽  
Cell Gene

AbstractWhile single-cell gene expression experiments present new challenges for data processing, the cell-to-cell variability observed also reveals statistical relationships that can be used by information theory. Here, we use multivariate information theory to explore the statistical dependencies between triplets of genes in single-cell gene expression datasets. We develop PIDC, a fast, efficient algorithm that uses partial information decomposition (PID) to identify regulatory relationships between genes. We thoroughly evaluate the performance of our algorithm and demonstrate that the higher order information captured by PIDC allows it to outperform pairwise mutual information-based algorithms when recovering true relationships present in simulated data. We also infer gene regulatory networks from three experimental single-cell data sets and illustrate how network context, choices made during analysis, and sources of variability affect network inference. PIDC tutorials and open-source software for estimating PID are available here:https://github.com/Tchanders/network_inference_tutorials. PIDC should facilitate the identification of putative functional relationships and mechanistic hypotheses from single-cell transcriptomic data.

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