Combination of Neuro-Fuzzy Network Models with Biological Knowledge for Reconstructing Gene Regulatory Networks

Inferring gene regulatory networks from large-scale expression data is an important topic in both cellular systems and computational biology. The inference of regulators might be the core factor for understanding actual regulatory conditions in gene regulatory networks, especially when strong regulators do work significantly. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on combining neuro-fuzzy network models with biological knowledge to infer strong regulators and interrelated fuzzy rules. The hybrid neuro-fuzzy architecture can not only infer the fuzzy rules, which are suitable for describing the regulatory conditions in regulatory networks, but also explain the meaning of nodes and weight value in the neural network. It can get useful rules automatically without factitious judgments. At the same time, it does not add recursive layers to the model, and the model can also strengthen the relationships among genes and reduce calculation. We use the proposed approach to reconstruct a partial gene regulatory network of yeast. The results show that this approach can work effectively.