Predicting Variabilities in Cardiac Gene Expression with a Boolean Network Incorporating Uncertainty

PLoS One. 2015 Jul 24;10(7):e0131832. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131832. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Gene interactions in cells can be represented by gene regulatory networks. A Boolean network models gene interactions according to rules where gene expression is represented by binary values (on / off or {1, 0}). In reality, however, the gene's state can have multiple values due to biological properties. Furthermore, the noisy nature of the experimental design results in uncertainty about a state of the gene. Here we present a new Boolean network paradigm to allow intermediate values on the interval [0, 1]. As in the Boolean network, fixed points or attractors of such a model correspond to biological phenotypes or states. We use our new extension of the Boolean network paradigm to model gene expression in first and second heart field lineages which are cardiac progenitor cell populations involved in early vertebrate heart development. By this we are able to predict additional biological phenotypes that the Boolean model alone is not able to identify without utilizing additional biological knowledge. The additional phenotypes predicted by the model were confirmed by published biological experiments. Furthermore, the new method predicts gene expression propensities for modelled but yet to be analyzed genes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Gene Expression*
  • Gene Regulatory Networks*
  • Models, Cardiovascular*
  • Models, Genetic*
  • Myocardium / metabolism*
  • Signal Transduction / genetics
  • Uncertainty
  • Xenopus / genetics
  • Xenopus Proteins / genetics

Substances

  • Xenopus Proteins

Grants and funding

This work was funded in part by the German federal ministry of education and research (BMBF) within the framework GERONTOSYS II (Forschungskern SyStaR, Project ID 0315894A to MK and HAK), European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 602783 (to HAK), and the International Graduate School in Molecular Medicine at Ulm University (GSC270). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.