A Bayesian Network-Based Approach to Selection of Intervention Points in the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Plant Defense Response Pathway.

An important problem in computational biology is the identification of potential points of intervention that can lead to modified network behavior in a genetic regulatory network. We consider the problem of deducing the effect of individual genes on the behavior of the network in a statistical framework. In this article, we make use of biological information from the literature to develop a Bayesian network and introduce a method to estimate parameters of this network using data that are relevant to the biological phenomena under study. Then, we give a novel approach to select significant nodes in the network using a decision-theoretic approach. The proposed method is applied to the analysis of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway in the plant defense response to pathogens. Results from applying the method to experimental data show that the proposed approach is effective in selecting genes that play crucial roles in the biological phenomenon being studied.