Prediction of MicroRNA-Disease Associations Based on Social Network Analysis Methods

Biomed Res Int. 2015:2015:810514. doi: 10.1155/2015/810514. Epub 2015 Jul 26.

Abstract

MicroRNAs constitute an important class of noncoding, single-stranded, ~22 nucleotide long RNA molecules encoded by endogenous genes. They play an important role in regulating gene transcription and the regulation of normal development. MicroRNAs can be associated with disease; however, only a few microRNA-disease associations have been confirmed by traditional experimental approaches. We introduce two methods to predict microRNA-disease association. The first method, KATZ, focuses on integrating the social network analysis method with machine learning and is based on networks derived from known microRNA-disease associations, disease-disease associations, and microRNA-microRNA associations. The other method, CATAPULT, is a supervised machine learning method. We applied the two methods to 242 known microRNA-disease associations and evaluated their performance using leave-one-out cross-validation and 3-fold cross-validation. Experiments proved that our methods outperformed the state-of-the-art methods.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Simulation
  • Databases, Genetic*
  • Genetic Predisposition to Disease / genetics*
  • Humans
  • Machine Learning*
  • MicroRNAs / genetics*
  • Models, Genetic*
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods
  • Signal Transduction / genetics*
  • Social Networking

Substances

  • MicroRNAs