Shortest path counting in probabilistic biological networks

摘要

BackgroundBiological regulatory networks, representing the interactions between genes and their products, control almost every biological activity in the cell. Shortest path search is critical to apprehend the structure of these networks, and to detect their key components. Counting the number of shortest paths between pairs of genes in biological networks is a polynomial time problem. The fact that biological interactions are uncertain events however drastically complicates the problem, as it makes the topology of a given network uncertain.