Geneticists studying molecular pathways of health and disease have a novel new computational method to identify networks of the interacting genes that underlie complex traits. Brynn Voy of ORNL's Life Sciences Division led a team that has developed a method to convert massive amounts of gene expression data into graphs and extract sets of perfectly interconnected genes called cliques. The method devised by Voy and Mike Langston, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee, overcomes limitations common to clustering algorithms used by genetics researchers to identify gene sets that control interactions between an organism and its environment. For their study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, Voy and Langston demonstrated the technique by applying it to the study of low-dose radiation exposure in mice, used as a genetic model for humans. The project was funded through the DOE Low Dose Radiation Research Program and by the National Institutes of Health.
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