Constructing disease-specific gene networks using pair-wise relevance metric: Application to colon cancer identifies interleukin 8, desmin and enolase 1 as the central elements

This study demonstrated that IL8, DES and ENO1 act as the central elements in colon cancer susceptibility, and protein biosynthesis and the ribosome-associated function categories largely account for the colon cancer tumuorigenesis. Thus, the newly developed relevancy-based networking approach offers a powerful means to reverse-engineer the disease-specific network, a promising tool for systematic dissection of complex diseases.