Benchmarking causal reasoning algorithms for gene expression-based compound mechanism of action analysis.
BMC Bioinformatics
; 24(1): 154, 2023 Apr 18.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37072707
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Elucidating compound mechanism of action (MoA) is beneficial to drug discovery, but in practice often represents a significant challenge. Causal Reasoning approaches aim to address this situation by inferring dysregulated signalling proteins using transcriptomics data and biological networks; however, a comprehensive benchmarking of such approaches has not yet been reported. Here we benchmarked four causal reasoning algorithms (SigNet, CausalR, CausalR ScanR and CARNIVAL) with four networks (the smaller Omnipath network vs. 3 larger MetaBase™ networks), using LINCS L1000 and CMap microarray data, and assessed to what extent each factor dictated the successful recovery of direct targets and compound-associated signalling pathways in a benchmark dataset comprising 269 compounds. We additionally examined impact on performance in terms of the functions and roles of protein targets and their connectivity bias in the prior knowledge networks.RESULTS:
According to statistical analysis (negative binomial model), the combination of algorithm and network most significantly dictated the performance of causal reasoning algorithms, with the SigNet recovering the greatest number of direct targets. With respect to the recovery of signalling pathways, CARNIVAL with the Omnipath network was able to recover the most informative pathways containing compound targets, based on the Reactome pathway hierarchy. Additionally, CARNIVAL, SigNet and CausalR ScanR all outperformed baseline gene expression pathway enrichment results. We found no significant difference in performance between L1000 data or microarray data, even when limited to just 978 'landmark' genes. Notably, all causal reasoning algorithms also outperformed pathway recovery based on input DEGs, despite these often being used for pathway enrichment. Causal reasoning methods performance was somewhat correlated with connectivity and biological role of the targets.CONCLUSIONS:
Overall, we conclude that causal reasoning performs well at recovering signalling proteins related to compound MoA upstream from gene expression changes by leveraging prior knowledge networks, and that the choice of network and algorithm has a profound impact on the performance of causal reasoning algorithms. Based on the analyses presented here this is true for both microarray-based gene expression data as well as those based on the L1000 platform.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Benchmarking
/
Perfilação da Expressão Gênica
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Idioma:
En
Revista:
BMC Bioinformatics
Assunto da revista:
INFORMATICA MEDICA
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Reino Unido