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Boolean Networks

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Handbook of Statistical Bioinformatics

Part of the book series: Springer Handbooks of Computational Statistics ((SHCS))

Abstract

Reconstruction of genetic regulatory networks from gene expression profiles and protein interaction data is a critical problem in systems biology. Boolean networks and their variants have been used for network reconstruction problems due to Boolean networks’ simplicity. In the graph of a Boolean network, nodes represent the statuses of genes while the edges represent relationships between genes. In a Boolean network model, the status of a gene is quantized as ‘on’ or ‘off’, representing the gene as being ‘active’ or ‘inactive’ respectively. In this chapter, we will introduce the basic definitions of Boolean networks and the analysis of their properties. We will also discuss a related model called probabilistic Boolean network, which extends Boolean networks in order to have the advantage of modeling with data uncertainty and model selection. Furthermore, we will also introduce directed acyclic Boolean network and the statistical method of SPAN to reconstruct Boolean networks from noisy array data by assigning an s-p-score for every pair of genes. At last, we will suggest possible directions for future developments on Boolean networks.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the English editing of Yang Wang and Arthur Tu. This work was partially supported by the National Science Council (NSC), National Center for Theoretical Sciences (NCTS) and Center of Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing (CMMSC) at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Statistics, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Tung-Hung Chueh & Henry Horng-Shing Lu

Authors
  1. Tung-Hung Chueh
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  2. Henry Horng-Shing Lu
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Correspondence to Henry Horng-Shing Lu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Institute of Statistics, National Chiao Tung University, Ta Hsueh Road 1001, Hsinchu, 30050, Taiwan, Taiwan R.O.C.

    Henry Horng-Shing Lu

  2. , Department of Empirical Inference, MPI for Intelligent Systems, Spemannstraße 38, Tübingen, 72076, Germany

    Bernhard Schölkopf

  3. School of Medicine, Dept. Epidemiology & Public Health, Yale University, College Street 60, New Haven, 06520, Connecticut, USA

    Hongyu Zhao

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Chueh, TH., Lu, H.HS. (2011). Boolean Networks. In: Lu, HS., Schölkopf, B., Zhao, H. (eds) Handbook of Statistical Bioinformatics. Springer Handbooks of Computational Statistics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16345-6_20

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