Centrality Analysis Methods for Biological Networks and Their Application to Gene Regulatory Networks

Abstract

The structural analysis of biological networks includes the ranking of the vertices based on the connection structure of a network. To support this analysis we discuss centrality measures which indicate the importance of vertices, and demonstrate their applicability on a gene regulatory network. We show that common centrality measures result in different valuations of the vertices and that novel measures tailored to specific biological investigations are useful for the analysis of biological networks, in particular gene regulatory networks.