Exploration of biological network centralities with CentiBiN

Background: The elucidation of whole-cell regulatory, metabolic, interaction and other biological networks generates the need for a meaningful ranking of network elements. Centrality analysis ranks network elements according to their importance within the network structure and different centrality measures focus on different importance concepts. Central elements of biological networks have been found to be, for example, essential for viability. Results: CentiBiN (Centralities in Biological Networks) is a tool for the computation and exploration of centralities in biological networks such as protein-protein interaction networks. It computes 17 different centralities for directed or undirected networks, ranging from local measures, that is, measures that only consider the direct neighbourhood of a network element, to global measures. CentiBiN supports the exploration of the centrality distribution by visualising central elements within the network and provides several layout mechanisms ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Björn H. Junker, Dirk Koschützki, Falk Schreiber
• Keywords: Biological Networks, BMCBI 2006, Central Elements, Network Element