The Multi-Node Topological Overlap Measure

Reference

1. Li A, Horvath S (2006) Network Neighborhood Analysis with the multi-node topological overlap measure. Bioinformatics. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btl581

Link to Paper: Bioinformatics Webpage

2. Li A, Horvath S (2007) Network Module Detection: Affinity Search Technique with the Topological Overlap Measure. Submitted.

Abstract for Neighborhood Analysis

A pair of nodes in a network is said to have high topological overlap if they are both strongly connected to the same group of nodes.
In gene networks, genes with high topological overlap have been found to have an increased chance of being part of the same biological pathway.

The use of topological overlap serves as a filter to exclude spurious or isolated connections. A topological overlap measure can be used in network analysis for finding similar nodes or for defining a neighborhood of an initial set of nodes.

The standard topological overlap measure allows one to measure pairwise topological overlap in an undirected network. Here we generalize this overlap measure to multiple nodes. The resulting multiTOM measure can be used to define a neighborhood of a initial set of nodes. We provide several applications which shows the use of these neighborhoods. The method is implemented in our MTOM software.