Research

Integrative analysis for finding genes and networks involved in diabetes and other complex diseases

Regine Bergholdt¹ , Zenia M Størling^{* 2} , Kasper Lage^{* 2} , E Olof Karlberg² , Páll Í Ólason² , Mogens Aalund³ , Jørn Nerup^1,4 , Søren Brunak² , Christopher T Workman² and Flemming Pociot^1,4

¹Steno Diabetes Center, Niels Steensensvej 2, DK-2820 Gentofte, Denmark

²Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark

³Neurotech A/S, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

⁴Institute for Clinical Science, University of Lund, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

Genome Biology 2007, 8:R253doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-11-r253

Published:	28 November 2007

Subject areas: Genetics, Genome studies, Medicine

Abstract

We have developed an integrative analysis method combining genetic interactions, identified using type 1 diabetes genome scan data, and a high-confidence human protein interaction network. Resulting networks were ranked by the significance of the enrichment of proteins from interacting regions. We identified a number of new protein network modules and novel candidate genes/proteins for type 1 diabetes. We propose this type of integrative analysis as a general method for the elucidation of genes and networks involved in diabetes and other complex diseases.