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Generating weighted and thresholded gene coexpression networks using signed distance correlation

Abstract:

Even within well-studied organisms, many genes lack useful functional annotations. One way to generate such functional information is to infer biological relationships between genes or proteins, using a network of gene coexpression data that includes functional annotations. Signed distance correlation has proved useful for the construction of unweighted gene coexpression networks. However, transforming correlation values into unweighted networks may lead to a loss of important biological information related to the intensity of the correlation. Here introduce a principled method to construct weighted gene coexpression networks using signed distance correlation. These networks contain weighted edges only between those pairs of genes whose correlation value is higher than a given threshold. We analyse data from different organisms and find that networks generated with our method based on signed distance correlation are more stable and capture more biological information compared to networks obtained from Pearson correlation. Moreover, we show that signed distance correlation networks capture more biological information than unweighted networks based on the same metric. While we use biological data sets to illustrate the method, the approach is general and can be used to construct networks in other domains.

Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Not peer reviewed

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Preprint server copy:
10.1101/2021.11.15.468627

Authors

More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
MPLS
Department:
Biology
Sub department:
Plant Sciences
Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0001-9262-0482
More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
MPLS
Department:
Biology
Sub department:
Plant Sciences
Oxford college:
Somerville College
Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0001-5087-6455
More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
MPLS
Department:
Mathematical Institute
Role:
Author
More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
MPLS
Department:
Statistics
Oxford college:
Kellogg College
Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0003-1388-2252
More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
MPLS
Department:
Statistics
Role:
Author
ORCID:
0000-0002-0363-9470


More from this funder
Funder identifier:
https://ror.org/0439y7842
Grant:
EP/T018445/1
More from this funder
Funder identifier:
https://ror.org/00cwqg982
Grant:
BB/T001801/1


Preprint server:
bioRxiv
Publication date:
2021-11-16
DOI:
EISSN:
2692-8205


Language:
English
Keywords:
Pubs id:
1210686
Local pid:
pubs:1210686
Deposit date:
2026-04-20
ARK identifier:

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