Identification of gene regulatory pathways: A regularization method

Abstract

Network based pathways are emerging as an important paradigm for analysis of biological systems. In the present article, we introduce a new method for identifying a set of extreme regulatory pathways by using structural equations as a tool for modeling genetic networks. The method, first of all, generates data on reaction flows in a pathway. A set of constraints is formulated incorporating weighting coefficients. The effectiveness of the present method is demonstrated on two genetic networks existing in the literature. A comparative study with the existing extreme pathway analysis also forms a part of this investigation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.