title: Identifying and Analyzing Novel Epilepsy-Related Genes Using Random Walk with Restart Algorithm.
abstract: As a pathological condition, epilepsy is caused by abnormal neuronal discharge in brain which will temporarily disrupt the cerebral functions. Epilepsy is a chronic disease which occurs in all ages and would seriously affect patients' personal lives. Thus, it is highly required to develop effective medicines or instruments to treat the disease. Identifying epilepsy-related genes is essential in order to understand and treat the disease because the corresponding proteins encoded by the epilepsy-related genes are candidates of the potential drug targets. In this study, a pioneering computational workflow was proposed to predict novel epilepsy-related genes using the random walk with restart (RWR) algorithm. As reported in the literature RWR algorithm often produces a number of false positive genes, and in this study a permutation test and functional association tests were implemented to filter the genes identified by RWR algorithm, which greatly reduce the number of suspected genes and result in only thirty-three novel epilepsy genes. Finally, these novel genes were analyzed based upon some recently published literatures. Our findings implicate that all novel genes were closely related to epilepsy. It is believed that the proposed workflow can also be applied to identify genes related to other diseases and deepen our understanding of the mechanisms of these diseases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Outpatient, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130033, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Department of Outpatient, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130033, China.
authors.forename: Dong-Mei
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130033, China.
authors.forename: Jing-Hui
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Guangdong AIB Polytechnic, Guangzhou 510507, China.
authors.forename: Kaiyan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130033, China.
authors.forename: Yi-Chun
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5883-9384
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130033, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1901-9778
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China.
authors.forename: ShaoPeng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130033, China.
authors.forename: Yu-Fei
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4411-9965
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Gao
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000235:genetics*; D056726:Genetic Association Studies / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans