Extracting Biological Significant Subnetworks from Protein-Protein Interactions Induced by Differentially Expressed Genes of HIV-1 Vpr Variants

Identification of protein interaction network is very important to find the cell signaling pathway for a particular disease. The authors have found the differentially expressed genes between two sample groups of HIV-1. Samples are wild type HIV-1 Vpr and HIV-1 mutant Vpr. They did statistical t-test and found false discovery rate (FDR) to identify the genes increased in expression (up-regulated) or decreased in expression (down-regulated). In the test, the authors have computed q-values of test to identify minimum FDR which occurs. As a result they found 172 differentially expressed genes between their sample wild type HIV-1 Vpr and HIV-1 mutant Vpr, R80A. They found 68 up-regulated genes and 104 down-regulated genes. From the 172 differentially expressed genes the authors found protein-protein interaction network with string-db and then clustered (subnetworks) the PPI networks with cytoscape3.0. Lastly, the authors studied significance of subnetworks with performing gene ontology and also studied the KEGG pathway of those subnetworks.