New tool could unpick complex cancer causes and help sociologists mine Facebook

December 15, 2008

Researchers at the University of Warwick's Department of Statistics and Centre for Complexity Science have devised a new research tool that could help unpick the complex cell interactions that lead to cancer and also allow social scientists to mine social networking sites such as Facebook for useful insights.

An approach called "graphical models" can be used by researchers to gain an understanding of a range of systems with multiple interacting factors. These models use mathematical objects called graphs to describe and depict the probability of relationships between each of the components. When used to study molecular biology researchers may be interested in saying something about which molecules influence one another; in the social sciences researchers would use them to understand the relationships between various economic and demographic factors.

However gaining such information from a graphical model can be a very challenging exercise, because of the vast range of possible graphs needed for even a relatively small number of variables. For instance the relatively small network studied by the University of Warwick led team for this research paper had just 14 proteins which were implicated in the development of a form of cancer, but those 14 proteins had a vast number of combinations of possible mutual interactions.

Such tasks would be made much easier if the mathematical tools used to undertake the analysis could somehow embody all the current knowledge of what was likely, and or probable, in the networks they were analysing. Such a mathematical method could be viewed as mimicking how human researchers learn from data, in effect interpreting new information in light of what is already known.

The Warwick researchers led by Dr Sach Mukherjee of Warwick's Department of Statistics and Centre for Complexity Science have devised just such a method that embeds current knowledge in the mathematical analysis to cut through the vast complexity of this type of analysis using a mechanism called "Informative Priors".

The researchers took the 14 protein network and created a mathematical tool that was able to incorporate all of what the interactions, and limits on interactions, that were likely and/or probable in such a network of these particular proteins. This allowed a rapid and accurate analysis of the probabilities of interactions between each on the 14 proteins. The technique even able to cope with misconceptions in current understanding of particular networks as it the was designed to "overturn" any reject any data included in the "Informative Priors" that was consistently at odds with any observed new data.

Analysis with these network models was much better able to resolve complex interactions than simple, correlation-based methods. Moreover using informative priors, gave much more accurate results than analysis that incorporated no prior understanding of the network (so called "flat priors").

The researchers will now use their new technique to examine the network of proteins behind the development of breast cancer but they are also looking at how the tool could be used in social science to mine a vast amount of useful anonymised data from social networking sites such as Facebook to gain significant new understandings of large scale interactions and relationships in society at large.

The research paper is entitled Network inference using informative priors by Dr Sach Mukherjee of the University of Warwick, Terence P. Speed of the University of California, Berkeley. It has just been published in PNAS.

Source: University of Warwick


Rank 4 /5 (4 votes)
Related Stories
Relevant PhysicsForums posts
  • Probability Question - Chances Of Meeting Again
    created1 hour ago
  • Young Diagrams
    created9 hours ago
  • transforming from polar to parametric functions
    created9 hours ago
  • Validity of proof method -- error in book?
    created10 hours ago
  • Finding intersections
    createdFeb 11, 2012
  • Interpreting a function based on it's equation.
    createdFeb 11, 2012
  • More from Physics Forums - General Math

More news stories

Australian women reject 'I love u' texts

Australian women may have embraced the digital era, but they prefer a face-to-face declaration of affection to an "I love u" text and find men addicted to their mobile phones a major turnoff.

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created 26 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

A frank discussion of the power law and linking correlation to causation

(PhysOrg.com) -- Michael Stumpf a mathematics professor at Imperial College in London, and Mason Porter a lecturer at Oxford have teamed together to write and publish a perspective piece in Science regarding the in ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 11 | with audio podcast report

US workers are 'giving away the store,' costing firms billions

Nearly 70 percent of the nation's service employees give away free goods and services – from hamburgers to cable TV – costing companies billions of dollars a year, according to a groundbreaking study.

Other Sciences / Economics & Business

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (5) | comments 11

Employers feel no love for unscrupulous practice of 'service sweethearting'

A new study led by two Florida State University marketing professors finds that some frontline service employees who are rewarded for hikes in customer loyalty and satisfaction also may engage in "service ...

Other Sciences / Economics & Business

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (3) | comments 10

New insights into how to correct false knowledge

The abundance of false information available on the Internet, in movies and on TV has created a big challenge for educators.

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created Feb 07, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (7) | comments 9 | with audio podcast


Japan's Fukushima reactor may be reheating: operator

Temperature readings at one of the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors have risen above Japan's stringent new safety standard but there was no immediate danger, its operator said Sunday.

Integrated pest management recommendations for the southern pine beetle

The southern pine beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann, is a chronic insect pest within pine forests in the southeastern United States. Under favorable environmental and host conditions, it is an agg ...

Botox developer rues missing out on billions

Botox developer Alan Scott says he rues the day he handed over rights to the best-selling wrinkle-smoothing drug to a US company for just $4.5 million, saying he might have become a billionaire.

Many lung cancer patients get radiation therapy that may not prolong their lives

A new study has found that many older lung cancer patients get treatments that may not help them live longer. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest that p ...

Young adults allowed to stay on parents' health insurance have improved access to care

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that laws permitting children to stay on their parents' health insurance through age 26 result in improved access to health care compared to states without those ...

Cancer rate 4 times higher in children with juvenile arthritis

New research reports that incident malignancy among children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is four times higher than in those without the disease. Findings now available in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal publis ...