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Cited by 133Bioinformatics and Genomic NetworksComputational Drug Discovery MethodsAdvanced Graph Neural Networks

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SkipGNN: predicting molecular interactions with skip-graph networks

Open access
Huang, Kexin, Xiao, Cao, Glass, Lucas M., Zitnik, Marinka, Sun, Jimeng·2020·Scientific Reports
DOI 10.1038/s41598-020-77766-9PMC PMC7713130
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Abstract

Molecular interaction networks are powerful resources for molecular discovery. They are increasingly used with machine learning methods to predict biologically meaningful interactions. While deep learning on graphs has dramatically advanced the prediction prowess, current graph neural network (GNN) methods are mainly optimized for prediction on the basis of direct similarity between interacting nodes. In biological networks, however, similarity between nodes that do not directly interact has proved incredibly useful in the last decade across a variety of interaction networks. Here, we present SkipGNN, a graph neural network approach for the prediction of molecular interactions. SkipGNN predicts molecular interactions by not only aggregating information from direct interactions but also from second-order interactions, which we call skip similarity. In contrast to existing GNNs, SkipGNN receives neural messages from two-hop neighbors as well as immediate neighbors in the interaction network and non-linearly transforms the messages to obtain useful information for prediction. To inject skip similarity into a GNN, we construct a modified version of the original network, called the skip graph. We then develop an iterative fusion scheme that optimizes a GNN using both the skip graph and the original graph. Experiments on four interaction networks, including drug–drug, drug–target, protein–protein, and gene–disease interactions, show that SkipGNN achieves superior and robust performance. Furthermore, we show that unlike popular GNNs, SkipGNN learns biologically meaningful embeddings and performs especially well on noisy, incomplete interaction networks.

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Figure 1 Direct versus skip similarity. (Left) Traditionally, an interaction between nodes A and B implies that A and B are similar and vice versa16. (Right) In contrast, in molecular interaction networks, directly interacting entities are not necessarily similar, which has been observed in numerous networks, including genetic interaction networks12,13 and protein–protein interaction networks14,15.
Figure 1 Direct versus skip similarity. (Left) Traditionally, an interaction between nodes A and B implies that A and B are similar and vice versa16. (Right) In contrast, in molecular interaction networks, directly interacting entities are not necessarily similar, which has been observed in numerous networks, including genetic interaction networks12,13 and protein–protein interaction networks14,15.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 2 Neural architecture of SkipGNN. (Left) SkipGNN constructs skip graph Gs (denoted by adjacency matrix As) based on the input graph G (denoted by adjacency matrix A) using Eq. (1). (Middle) Initial node embeddings, H⁽⁰⁾ and S⁽⁰⁾, are specified using side information (e.g., gene expression vectors if nodes represent genes) or generated using node2vec18. In SkipGNN, node embeddings are then propagated along edges of Gs and G and transformed through a series of computations (layers), which output powerful embeddings that can then be used for downstream prediction of interactions. Illustrated is a two-layer iterative fusion scheme. In the first layer, two GNNs with parameter weight matrices Wo⁽⁰⁾ and Ws⁽⁰⁾ (operating on A and As, respectively) are fused via weight matrices Wo^(^(′)(0)) and Ws^(^(′)(0)) based on Eq. (2). This completes computations in the first layer of SkipGNN, producing embeddings H⁽¹⁾ and S⁽¹⁾. In the second layer, those embeddings are transformed via Wo⁽¹⁾ and Ws⁽¹⁾ using Eq. (3), resulting in final embeddings E. (Right) Embeddings Ei and Ej of target nodes i and j are retrieved, concatenated, and then fed into a decoder (parameterized by Wd). Decoder returns pij, representing the probability that nodes i and j interact.
Figure 2 Neural architecture of SkipGNN. (Left) SkipGNN constructs skip graph Gs (denoted by adjacency matrix As) based on the input graph G (denoted by adjacency matrix A) using Eq. (1). (Middle) Initial node embeddings, H⁽⁰⁾ and S⁽⁰⁾, are specified using side information (e.g., gene expression vectors if nodes represent genes) or generated using node2vec18. In SkipGNN, node embeddings are then propagated along edges of Gs and G and transformed through a series of computations (layers), which output powerful embeddings that can then be used for downstream prediction of interactions. Illustrated is a two-layer iterative fusion scheme. In the first layer, two GNNs with parameter weight matrices Wo⁽⁰⁾ and Ws⁽⁰⁾ (operating on A and As, respectively) are fused via weight matrices Wo^(^(′)(0)) and Ws^(^(′)(0)) based on Eq. (2). This completes computations in the first layer of SkipGNN, producing embeddings H⁽¹⁾ and S⁽¹⁾. In the second layer, those embeddings are transformed via Wo⁽¹⁾ and Ws⁽¹⁾ using Eq. (3), resulting in final embeddings E. (Right) Embeddings Ei and Ej of target nodes i and j are retrieved, concatenated, and then fed into a decoder (parameterized by Wd). Decoder returns pij, representing the probability that nodes i and j interact.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 3 Predictive performance as a function of network incompleteness. SkipGNN provides robust result in varying fraction of missing edges. Fivefold average with 95% confidence interval for PR-AUC against various fractions of missing edges on four prediction tasks: drug–target interaction prediction (DTI), drug–drug interaction prediction (DDI), protein–protein interaction prediction (PPI) and gene–disease interaction prediction (GDI) on node2vec, Spectral Clustering (SC), Variational Graph Auto-Encoder (VGAE), Graph Convolutional Network (GCN), and SkipGNN. We omit DeepWalk as it has similar performance as node2vec. SkipGNN consistently shows the best performance even when networks are highly incomplete.
Figure 3 Predictive performance as a function of network incompleteness. SkipGNN provides robust result in varying fraction of missing edges. Fivefold average with 95% confidence interval for PR-AUC against various fractions of missing edges on four prediction tasks: drug–target interaction prediction (DTI), drug–drug interaction prediction (DDI), protein–protein interaction prediction (PPI) and gene–disease interaction prediction (GDI) on node2vec, Spectral Clustering (SC), Variational Graph Auto-Encoder (VGAE), Graph Convolutional Network (GCN), and SkipGNN. We omit DeepWalk as it has similar performance as node2vec. SkipGNN consistently shows the best performance even when networks are highly incomplete.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 4 Visualizations of drug–target interaction network. GCN does not distinguish drug and target gene as it only captures direct similarity whereas SkipGNN is able to distinct drug and target gene embeddings, confirming its ability to capture skip similarity. We use GCN and SkipGNN on the drug–target interaction dataset to learn drug/target embeddings, which are visualized using t-SNE.
Figure 4 Visualizations of drug–target interaction network. GCN does not distinguish drug and target gene as it only captures direct similarity whereas SkipGNN is able to distinct drug and target gene embeddings, confirming its ability to capture skip similarity. We use GCN and SkipGNN on the drug–target interaction dataset to learn drug/target embeddings, which are visualized using t-SNE.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 5 Visualizations of gene–disease interaction network. GCN does not distinguish disease and gene as it only captures direct similarity whereas SkipGNN is able to distinct disease and gene embeddings, confirming its ability to capture skip similarity. We use GCN and SkipGNN on the gene–disease interaction dataset to learn gene/disease embeddings, which are visualized using t-SNE.
Figure 5 Visualizations of gene–disease interaction network. GCN does not distinguish disease and gene as it only captures direct similarity whereas SkipGNN is able to distinct disease and gene embeddings, confirming its ability to capture skip similarity. We use GCN and SkipGNN on the gene–disease interaction dataset to learn gene/disease embeddings, which are visualized using t-SNE.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 6 The ability of skip graph and original graph to capture the network structure in the face of incomplete data. Skip graph can better preserve the network structure than the original graph, as evidenced by skip graph’s smaller relative error ("Robust learning on incomplete interaction network" section) than that of the original graph. This is true for all % of missing edges, indicating that skip graph can keep useful information about interaction structure even when networks are highly incomplete and many interactions are missing.
Figure 6 The ability of skip graph and original graph to capture the network structure in the face of incomplete data. Skip graph can better preserve the network structure than the original graph, as evidenced by skip graph’s smaller relative error ("Robust learning on incomplete interaction network" section) than that of the original graph. This is true for all % of missing edges, indicating that skip graph can keep useful information about interaction structure even when networks are highly incomplete and many interactions are missing.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 7 Network Visualization of four biomedical interaction networks.
Figure 7 Network Visualization of four biomedical interaction networks.CC BY · PubMed Central

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Metadata

Authors
Huang, K., Xiao, C., Glass, L. M., Zitnik, M., & Sun, J.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • IQVIA (United States) (US)
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
Corresponding author
Sun, Jimeng
ORCID
Venue
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2020-12-03
Volume
10
Issue
1
Pages
21092-21092
ISSN
2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41598-020-77766-9
PMC
PMC7713130
OpenAlex
W3108458441
Cited by
133
References
65
Citations by year
2026: 14 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 3
FWCI
4.62
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks
  • Life Sciences › Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics › Drug Discovery › Computational Drug Discovery Methods
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Advanced Graph Neural Networks
Keywords
graph neural networks, molecular interaction prediction, second-order interactions, skip graphs, drug-drug interactions, drug-target interactions, protein-protein interaction, gene-disease interaction, node embeddings

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