Integrated analysis of multiple data sources reveals modular structure of biological networks

It has been a challenging task to integrate high-throughput data into investigations of the systematic and dynamic organization of biological networks. Here, we presented a simple hierarchical clustering algorithm that goes a long way to achieve this aim. Our method effectively reveals the modular structure of the yeast protein–protein interaction network and distinguishes protein complexes from functional modules by integrating high-throughput protein–protein interaction data with the added subcellular localization and expression profile data. Furthermore, we take advantage of the detected modules to provide a reliably functional context for the uncharacterized components within modules. On the other hand, the integration of various protein–protein association information makes our method robust to false-positives, especially for derived protein complexes. More importantly, this simple method can be extended naturally to other types of data fusion and provides a framework for the study of more comprehensive properties of the biological network and other forms of complex networks.