Network Medicine: a Network-based Approach to Human Disease

Overview

Journal Nat Rev Genet

Specialty Genetics

Date 2010 Dec 18

PMID 21164525

Citations 1978

Authors

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Natali Gulbahce

Joseph Loscalzo

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Given the functional interdependencies between the molecular components in a human cell, a disease is rarely a consequence of an abnormality in a single gene, but reflects the perturbations of the complex intracellular and intercellular network that links tissue and organ systems. The emerging tools of network medicine offer a platform to explore systematically not only the molecular complexity of a particular disease, leading to the identification of disease modules and pathways, but also the molecular relationships among apparently distinct (patho)phenotypes. Advances in this direction are essential for identifying new disease genes, for uncovering the biological significance of disease-associated mutations identified by genome-wide association studies and full-genome sequencing, and for identifying drug targets and biomarkers for complex diseases.

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