ITM Probe: analyzing information flow in protein networks

TL;DR

ITM Probe is a tool that models and visualizes information flow in protein networks, aiding biological hypothesis generation by analyzing relevant proteins based on specified origins and destinations.

Contribution

It introduces a diffusion-based method for analyzing information flow in protein networks without prior sub-network restrictions, with an interactive visualization and enrichment analysis feature.

Findings

Identifies relevant proteins based on information flow context

Provides graphical network representations

Facilitates hypothesis formation through enrichment analysis

Abstract

Summary: Founded upon diffusion with damping, ITM Probe is an application for modeling information flow in protein interaction networks without prior restriction to the sub-network of interest. Given a context consisting of desired origins and destinations of information, ITM Probe returns the set of most relevant proteins with weights and a graphical representation of the corresponding sub-network. With a click, the user may send the resulting protein list for enrichment analysis to facilitate hypothesis formation or confirmation. Availability: ITM Probe web service and documentation can be found at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/qmbp/mn/itm_probe