An evolutionary system for the prediction of gene regulatory networks in biological cells

Estimation or prediction of gene regulatory networks is an important problem for the elucidation of biological mechanisms. This paper presents a method to predict gene regulatory networks from gene expression time course data, based on a ultra high speed gene network simulator Starpack and evolutionary mechanisms. The proposed method predicts gene regulatory network from gene expression time course data. The prediction is a combination of two stage loop, each stage using evolutionary mechanism. Networks are simulated with Starpack, and those producing time course data similar to the target gene expression data are selected as candidates. The simulation of the second stage has higher precision than the first stage, serving as local optimization process. Five synthetic networks were tested, and the performance of the proposed method was higher than conventional methods.