dc.description.abstract |
Deciphering the underlying biological processes comprising the Human Oral Metabiome
is important to the understanding of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) disease. The
National Institute of Health has launched the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) to
accelerate research and discovery techniques for five microbiome sites on the human
body. Knowledge discovery techniques are needed to point researchers to follow-on
hypotheses to quickly pinpoint areas of great promise. We developed the Differential
Correlation Network (DCN) as a technique for researcher's to perform knowledge
discovery in the oral mycobiome field. Using data from the Oral Microbiome, Differential
Correlation Networks were applied to metabolites, bacteria, and fungi sampled from 12
Controls and 12 HIV Patients. By analyzing 100's of features across disease vs. control
classes, statistically significant feature pair differences are captured and presented in
Cytoscape. Several interesting differences are discovered and their possible biological
significance is presented. The Systems model in conjunction with known biological
metadata can identify promising difference networks and direct follow-on research based
on DCN generated hypothesis. |
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