Differential Association Rules: Understanding Annotations in Protein Interaction Networks

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the use of differential association rules to study the annotations of proteins in one or more interaction networks. Using this technique, we find the differences in the annotations of interacting proteins in a network. We extend the concept to compare annotations of interacting proteins across different definitions of interaction networks. Both cases reveal instances of rules that explain known and unknown characteristics of the network(s). By taking advantage of such data mining techniques, a large number of interesting patterns can be effectively explored that otherwise would not be.