Page 67 - GPD-1-2

Gene & Protein in Disease

REVIEW ARTICLE
Network biology: Recent advances and challenges

Pei Wang*
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, P.R. China

Abstract

Biological networks have garnered widespread attention. The development of
biological networks has spawned the birth of a new interdisciplinary field – network
biology. Network biology involves the exploration of complex biological systems
through biological networks for better understanding of biological functions. This
paper reviews some of the recent development of network biology. On the one hand,
various approaches to constructing different types of biological networks are reviewed,
and the pros and cons of each approach are discussed; on the other hand, the recent
advances of information mining in biological networks are reviewed. The principles of
guilt-by-association and guilt-by-rewiring in network biology and their applications
are discussed. Although great advances have been achieved in the field of network
biology over the past decades, there are still many challenging issues. First, efficient
and reliable network inference algorithms for high-dimensional and highly noisy
omics data are still in great demand. Second, the research focus will be on multilayer
biological network theory. This plays a critical role in the exploration of the multi-scale
or dynamical characteristics of complex biomolecular networks by integrating multi-
source heterogeneous omics data. Third, a close cooperation among biologists, medical
workers, and researchers from network science is still a prerequisite in the applications
of network biology. The rapid development of network biology will undoubtedly raise
important clues for understanding complex phenotypes in biological systems.
*Corresponding author:
Pei Wang
(wangpei@henu.edu.cn)
Keywords: Biological network; Network construction; Omics data; Informative gene
Citation: Wang P, 2022, Network identification; Multilayer network
biology: Recent advances and
challenges. Gene Protein Dis,
1(2):101.
https://doi.org/10.36922/gpd.v1i2.101
Received: May 19, 2022 1. Introduction
Accepted: September 15, 2022 With the development of the complex network theory, complex networks have become
Publish Online: October 6, 2022
effective tools to model and investigate various complex systems [1-4] . In biological
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). systems, biomolecules rarely work alone. The interactions among various biomolecules
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the consist of different types of biological networks [3,4] . Typical biological networks include
Creative Commons Attribution gene regulatory network (GRN) [5-7] , protein-protein interaction (PPI) network [8-13] ,
License, permitting distribution, transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) [14-16] , metabolic network [17,18] , signaling
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is transduction network [19-21] , gene co-expression network (GCN) [22-26] , disease network [27,28] ,
[29]
properly cited. and drug-target network . Different types of biological networks describe the biological
[30]
Publisher’s Note: AccScience systems at different scales and perspectives . The rapid advances of biological networks
Publishing remains neutral with have given birth to a new interdisciplinary field – network biology [3,4,31,32] .
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional Network biology uses the complex network theory to model and explore biological
affiliations. systems and help people better understand, predict, and control complex biological

Volume 1 Issue 2 (2022) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/gpd.v1i2.101