A Bi-Objective RNN Model to Reconstruct Gene Regulatory Network: A Modified Multi-Objective Simulated Annealing Approach

Gene Regulatory Network (GRN) is a virtual network in a cellular context of an organism, comprising a set of genes and their internal relationships to regulate protein production rate (gene expression level) of each other through coded proteins. Computational Reconstruction of GRN from gene expression data is a widely-applied research area. Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) is a useful modeling scheme for GRN reconstruction. In this research, the RNN formulation of GRN reconstruction having single objective function has been modified to incorporate a new objective function. An existing multi-objective meta-heuristic algorithm, called Archived Multi Objective Simulated Annealing (AMOSA), has been modified and applied to this bi-objective RNN formulation. Executing the resulting algorithm (called AMOSA-GRN) on a gene expression dataset, a collection (termed as Archive) of non-dominated GRNs has been obtained. Ensemble averaging has been applied on the archives, and obtained through a sequence of executions of AMOSA-GRN. Accuracy of GRNs in the averaged archive, with respect to gold standard GRN, varies in the range 0.875 – 1.0 (87.5 - 100 percent).