Cited by 9Bioinformatics and Genomic NetworksAlzheimer's disease research and treatmentsGenetic Associations and Epidemiology

Identification of functionally connected multi-omic biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease using modularity-constrained Lasso

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Xie, Linhui, Varathan, Pradeep, Nho, Kwangsik, Saykin, Andrew J., Salama, Paul, Yan, Jingwen·2020·PLOS ONE

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Abstract

Large-scale genome wide association studies (GWASs) have led to discovery of many genetic risk factors in Alzheimer's disease (AD), such as APOE, TOMM40 and CLU. Despite the significant progress, it remains a major challenge to functionally validate these genetic findings and translate them into targetable mechanisms. Integration of multiple types of molecular data is increasingly used to address this problem. In this paper, we proposed a modularity-constrained Lasso model to jointly analyze the genotype, gene expression and protein expression data for discovery of functionally connected multi-omic biomarkers in AD. With a prior network capturing the functional relationship between SNPs, genes and proteins, the newly introduced penalty term maximizes the global modularity of the subnetwork involving selected markers and encourages the selection of multi-omic markers with dense functional connectivity, instead of individual markers. We applied this new model to the real data collected in the ROS/MAP cohort where the cognitive performance was used as disease quantitative trait. A functionally connected subnetwork involving 276 multi-omic biomarkers, including SNPs, genes and proteins, were identified to bear predictive power. Within this subnetwork, multiple trans-omic paths from SNPs to genes and then proteins were observed. This suggests that cognitive performance deterioration in AD patients can be potentially a result of genetic variations due to their cascade effect on the downstream transcriptome and proteome level.

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  • Modularity-constrained Lasso has been used to link genetic variants to transcriptomic and proteomic alterations that collectively influence cognitive function.

    “For example, modularity-constrained Lasso has been used to link genetic variants to transcriptomic and proteomic alterations that collectively influence cognitive function332.”

    From Artificial intelligence-driven multi-omics approaches in Alzheimer's disease: Progress, challenges, and future directions (2025) · cites this paper as [332]

    The Introduction reports that modularity-constrained Lasso identified a connected subnetwork of SNPs, genes and proteins using cognitive performance as the outcome. It describes a genetic-to-transcriptomic-to-proteomic cascade affecting cognitive deterioration as a possibility, not an established collective influence on cognitive function. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Graph neural networks leverage known biological interactions, including gene-gene and protein-protein relationships, to enhance biomarker discovery, improving predictive performance and elucidating interconnected molecular subnetworks.

    “Concurrently, AI methodologies such as graph neural networks leverage known biological interactions, including gene–gene and protein–protein relationships, to enhance biomarker discovery. These models not only improve predictive performance but also elucidate interconnected molecular subnetworks that mediate broader disease processes314,332.”

    From Artificial intelligence-driven multi-omics approaches in Alzheimer's disease: Progress, challenges, and future directions (2025) · cites this paper as [332]

    The Introduction describes using known SNP–gene–protein relationships to discover connected biomarkers, and Results > Performance comparison with competing methods reports better predictive performance and more connected subnetworks for modularity-constrained Lasso. The cited method is not a graph neural network; the paper compares it with GraphNet-constrained Lasso, which it says selected less-connected markers. Page numbers were not supplied in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. [1]Organization WH, et al Global Health Estimates 2016: Deaths by Cause. Age, Sex, by Country and by Region. 2000; 2016: 2018.
  2. [23]Hildebrand R. Identification of community structure in networks with convex optimization. arXiv preprint arXiv:08061896. 2008;.

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Authors
Xie, L., Varathan, P., Nho, K., Saykin, A. J., Salama, P., & Yan, J.
Affiliations
  • Indiana University Indianapolis (US)
  • Indiana University Hospital (US)
Corresponding author
Yan, Jingwen
Venue
PLOS ONE
Published
2020-06-17
Volume
15
Issue
6
Pages
e0234748
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3035808001
Cited by
9
References
69
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1
FWCI
0.32
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • IUScholarWorks (Indiana University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Purdue University Indianapolis (Indiana University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (R21 AG066135, R01 AG019771, P30 AG010133)
  • Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (CRII 1755836)
  • Indiana University (Indiana University Collaborative Research Grant)
  • Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (Pilot grant)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
Keywords
Alzheimer's disease, multi-omics biomarkers, functional connectivity, network modularity, gene expression, protein expression, cognitive performance, apolipoprotein E, TOMM40, clusterin, biomarker selection
MeSH terms
Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Alzheimer Disease, Female, Humans, Male, Biomarkers, Computational Biology, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Genomics

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