Tissue-Specific Functional Networks for Prioritizing Phenotype and Disease Genes
Figure 4
Tissue-specific networks perform better than the global network in predicting genes related to different phenotypes.
By mapping phenotypes to different tissues according to their terminology and description, we are able to compare the performance of tissue-specific networks and the global network in predicting phenotype-related genes. Candle-stick plots (minimum, 25%, median, 75% and maximum) show the distribution of percentage AUC improvement when predicting phenotype-related genes. A. Phenotypes were grouped according to the number of annotated genes. Tissue-specific functional networks show consistent improvement across different phenotype sizes. B. Phenotypes were grouped according to major organ systems of their corresponding tissue. Improvements were consistent across all major systems. C. Example precision-recall curves for “abnormal osteogenesis” (MP:0000057), “abnormal nervous system electrophysiology” (MP:0002272), “abnormal spleen white pulp morphology” (MP:0002357), and “abnormal CNS glial cell morphology” (MP:0003634) using both tissue-specific networks (shown in red) and global networks (shown in green). For phenotypes such as these, tissue-specific networks are necessary to make accurate predictions.