ndexr

A client for the OmniPath web service (https://www.omnipathdb.org) and many other resources. It also includes functions to transform and pretty print some of the downloaded data, functions to access a number of other resources such as BioPlex, ConsensusPathDB, EVEX, Gene Ontology, Guide to Pharmacology (IUPHAR/BPS), Harmonizome, HTRIdb, Human Phenotype Ontology, InWeb InBioMap, KEGG Pathway, Pathway Commons, Ramilowski et al. 2015, RegNetwork, ReMap, TF census, TRRUST and Vinayagam et al. 2011. Furthermore, OmnipathR features a close integration with the NicheNet method for ligand activity prediction from transcriptomics data, and its R implementation `nichenetr` (available only on github).

Create, handle, validate, visualize and convert networks in the Cytoscape exchange (CX) format to standard data types and objects. The package also provides conversion to and from objects of iGraph and graphNEL. The CX format is also used by the NDEx platform, a online commons for biological networks, and the network visualization software Cytocape.

transomics2cytoscape generates a file for 3D transomics visualization by providing input that specifies the IDs of multiple KEGG pathway layers, their corresponding Z-axis heights, and an input that represents the edges between the pathway layers. The edges are used, for example, to describe the relationships between kinase on a pathway and enzyme on another pathway. This package automates creation of a transomics network as shown in the figure in Yugi.2014 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2014.07.021) using Cytoscape automation (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-019-1758-4).

Package to retrieve and visualize data from the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (http://ctdbase.org/). The downloaded data is formated as DataFrames for further downstream analyses.

Motivation: The understanding of cancer mechanism requires the identification of genes playing a role in the development of the pathology and the characterization of their role (notably oncogenes and tumor suppressors). Results: We present an R/bioconductor package called MoonlightR which returns a list of candidate driver genes for specific cancer types on the basis of TCGA expression data. The method first infers gene regulatory networks and then carries out a functional enrichment analysis (FEA) (implementing an upstream regulator analysis, URA) to score the importance of well-known biological processes with respect to the studied cancer type. Eventually, by means of random forests, MoonlightR predicts two specific roles for the candidate driver genes: i) tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) and ii) oncogenes (OCGs). As a consequence, this methodology does not only identify genes playing a dual role (e.g. TSG in one cancer type and OCG in another) but also helps in elucidating the biological processes underlying their specific roles. In particular, MoonlightR can be used to discover OCGs and TSGs in the same cancer type. This may help in answering the question whether some genes change role between early stages (I, II) and late stages (III, IV) in breast cancer. In the future, this analysis could be useful to determine the causes of different resistances to chemotherapeutic treatments.

MIRit is an R package that provides several methods for investigating the relationships between miRNAs and genes in different biological conditions. In particular, MIRit allows to explore the functions of dysregulated miRNAs, and makes it possible to identify miRNA-gene regulatory axes that control biological pathways, thus enabling the users to unveil the complexity of miRNA biology. MIRit is an all-in-one framework that aims to help researchers in all the central aspects of an integrative miRNA-mRNA analyses, from differential expression analysis to network characterization.