NERI: network-medicine based integrative approach for disease gene prioritization by relative importance

Background Complex diseases are characterized as being polygenic and multifactorial, so this poses a challenge regarding the search for genes related to them. With the advent of high-throughput technologies for genome sequencing, gene expression measurements (transcriptome), and protein-protein interactions, complex diseases have been sistematically investigated. Particularly, Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) networks have been used to prioritize genes related to complex diseases according to its topological features. However, PPI networks are affected by ascertainment bias, in which more studied proteins tend to have more connections, degrading the results quality. Additionally, methods using only PPI networks can provide only static and non-specific results, since the topologies of these networks are not specific of a given disease.