The implications of human metabolic network topology for disease comorbidity
Authors: D.-S. Lee, J. Park, K. A. Kay, N. A. Christakis, Z. N. Oltvai, A.-L. Barabási
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, 9880-9885 (2008)
Most diseases are the consequence of the breakdown of cellular processes, but the relationships among genetic/epigenetic defects, the molecular interaction networks underlying them, and the disease phenotypes remain poorly understood. To gain insights into such relationships, here we constructed a bipartite human disease association network in which nodes are diseases and two diseases are linked if mutated enzymes associated with them catalyze adjacent metabolic reactions. We find that connected disease pairs display higher correlated reaction flux rate, corresponding enzyme-encoding gene coexpression, and higher comorbidity than those that have no metabolic link between them. Furthermore, the more connected a disease is to other diseases, the higher is its prevalence and associated mortality rate. The network topology-based approach also helps to
