Deep-HPI-pred: An R-Shiny applet for network-based classification and prediction of Host-Pathogen protein-protein interactions

Host-pathogen interactions (HPIs) are vital in numerous biological activities and are intrinsically linked to the onset and progression of infectious diseases. HPIs are pivotal in the entire lifecycle of diseases: from the onset of pathogen introduction, navigating through the mechanisms that bypass host cellular defenses, to its subsequent proliferation inside the host. At the heart of these stages lies the synergy of proteins from both the host and the pathogen. By understanding these interlinking protein dynamics, we can gain crucial insights into how diseases progress and pave the way for stronger plant defenses and the swift formulation of countermeasures. In the framework of current study, we developed a web-based R/Shiny app, Deep-HPI-pred, that uses network-driven feature learning method to predict the yet unmapped interactions between pathogen and host proteins. Leveraging citrus and Las bacteria training datasets as case study, we spotlight the effectiveness of Deep-HPI-pred in discerning Protein-protein interaction (PPIs) between them. Deep-HPI-pred use Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) models for HPI prediction, which is based on a comprehensive evaluation of topological features and neural network architectures. When subjected to independent validation datasets, the predicted models consistently surpassed a Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.80 in host-pathogen interactions. Remarkably, the use of Eigenvector Centrality as the leading topological feature further enhanced this performance. Further, Deep-HPI-pred also offers relevant gene ontology (GO) term information for each pathogen and host protein within the system. This protein annotation data contributes an additional layer to our understanding of the intricate dynamics within host-pathogen interactions. In the additional benchmarking studies, the Deep-HPI-pred model has proven its robustness by consistently delivering reliable results across different host-pathogen systems, including plant-pathogens (accuracy of 98.4% and 97.9%), human-virus (accuracy of 94.3%), and animal-bacteria (accuracy of 96.6%) interactomes. These results not only demonstrate the model's versatility but also pave the way for gaining comprehensive insights into the molecular underpinnings of complex host-pathogen interactions. Taken together, the Deep-HPI-pred applet offers a unified web service for both identifying and illustrating interaction networks. Deep-HPI-pred applet is freely accessible at its homepage