Functional Genomics Assistant (FUGA): a toolbox for the analysis of complex biological networks.
BACKGROUND
Cellular constituents such as proteins, DNA, and RNA form a complex web of interactions that regulate biochemical homeostasis and determine the dynamic cellular response to external stimuli. It follows that detailed understanding of these patterns is critical for the assessment of fundamental processes in cell biology and pathology. Representation and analysis of cellular constituents through network principles is a promising and popular analytical avenue towards a deeper understanding of molecular mechanisms in a system-wide context.


RESULTS
We present Functional Genomics Assistant (FUGA) - an extensible and portable MATLAB toolbox for the inference of biological relationships, graph topology analysis, random network simulation, network clustering, and functional enrichment statistics. In contrast to conventional differential expression analysis of individual genes, FUGA offers a framework for the study of system-wide properties of biological networks and highlights putative molecular targets using concepts of systems biology.


CONCLUSIONS
FUGA offers a simple and customizable framework for network analysis in a variety of systems biology applications. It is freely available for individual or academic use at http://code.google.com/p/fuga.
Cardiovascular Division - King's College London (KCL) BHF Centre of Research Excellence - School of Medicine - James Black Centre - 125 Coldharbour Lane, London SE5 9NU - UK. ignat.drozdov@kcl.ac.uk.
Ignat
I
Drozdov
Christos A
CA
Ouzounis
Ajay M
AM
Shah
Sophia
S
Tsoka