分类: 生物学 >> 生物物理学 >> 生物力学与生物流变学 提交时间: 2016-05-12
摘要: The human influenza A (H3N2) virus dominated the 2014-2015 winter season in many countries and caused massive morbidity and mortality because of its antigenic variation. So far, very little is known about the antigenic patterns of the recent H3N2 virus. By systematically mapping the antigenic relationships of H3N2 strains isolated since 2010, we discovered that two groups with obvious antigenic divergence, named SW13 (A/Switzerland/9715293/2013-like strains) and HK14 (A/Hong Kong/5738/2014-like strains), co-circulated during the 2014-2015 winter season. HK14 group co-circulated with SW13 in Europe and the United States during this season, while there were few strains of HK14 in mainland China, where SW13 has dominated since 2012. Furthermore, we found that substitutions near the receptor-binding site on hemagglutinin played an important role in the antigenic variation of both the groups. These findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the recent antigenic evolution of H3N2 virus and will aid in the selection of vaccine strains.
分类: 生物学 >> 生物物理学 提交时间: 2016-05-12
摘要: Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks serve as a powerful tool for unraveling protein functions, disease-gene and disease-disease associations. However, a direct strategy for integrating protein interaction, protein function and diseases is still absent. Moreover, the interrelated relationships among these three levels are poorly understood. Here we present a novel systematic method to integrate protein interaction, function, and disease networks. We first identified topological modules in human protein interaction data using the network topological algorithm (NeTA) we previously developed. The resulting modules were then associated with functional terms using Gene Ontology to obtain functional modules. Finally, disease modules were constructed by associating the modules with OMIM and GWAS. We found that most topological modules have cohesive structure, significant pathway annotations and good modularity. Most functional modules (70.6%) fully cover corresponding topological modules, and most disease modules (88.5%) are fully covered by the corresponding functional modules. Furthermore, we identified several protein modules of interest that we describe in detail, which demonstrate the power of our integrative approach. This approach allows us to link genes, and pathways with their corresponding disorders, which may ultimately help us to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.