MATria: a unified centrality algorithm

• NCJ Number: 254202
• Journal: Bmc Bioinformatics Volume: 20 Dated: 2019
• Author(s): Trevor Cickovski; Vanessa Acular-Pulido; Giri Natasimhan
• Date Published: 2019
• Length: 12 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2017-NE-BX-0001
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Award: Implementation of epigenetics into forensic science: Development of a PCR based multiplex for the simultaneous analysis of age and body fluid identification

Annotation

This article generalizes the results of any k centrality algorithms through the authors' iterative algorithm MATRIA, producing a single ranked and unified set of central nodes.

Abstract

Computing centrality is a foundational concept in social networking that involves finding the most "central" or important nodes. In some biological networks, defining importance is difficult, which then creates challenges in finding an appropriate centrality algorithm. Through tests on three biological networks, the authors of this article demonstrate evident and balanced correlations with the results of these k algorithms. They also improve its speed through GPU parallelism. The results show iteration to be a powerful technique that can eliminate spatial bias among central nodes, increasing the level of agreement between algorithms with various importance definitions. GPU parallelism improves speed and makes iteration a tractable problem for larger networks. (publisher abstract modified)