The Interference team at CBMC, University of Verona, Italy, is pleased
to announce the release of the INTERFERENCE plugin, version 1.0
(http://www.cbmc.it/~scardonig/interference/Interference.php). You can
download the plugin through the Cytoscape application’s Plugin Manager
or from cytoscape.org.

Interference is a Cytoscape plug-in for virtual experimental network
topological analysis allowing virtual knock-out experiments on complex
networks

Centrality indexes allow categorizing nodes in complex networks
according to their topological relevance (see CentiScaPe Plugin). In a
node-oriented perspective, centralities are very useful topological
parameters to compute in order to quantify the effect of individual
node(s) alteration. We have introduced the notion of interference and
developed the Cytoscape plugin Interference to evaluate the
topological effects of single or multiple nodes removal from a
network. In this perspective, interference allows virtual node knock-
out experiments: it is possible to remove one or more nodes from a
network and analyze the consequences on network structure, by looking
to the variations of the node centralities values. As the centrality
value of a node is strictly dependent on the network structure and on
the properties of other nodes in the network, the consequences of a
node deletion are well captured by the variation on the centrality
values of all the other nodes.

Potential Applications

The interference approach can model common situations where real nodes
are removed or added from/to a physical network:

-Biological networks, where one or more nodes (genes, proteins,
metabolites) are possibly removed from the network because of gene
deletion, pharmacological treatment or protein degradation.
Interference can be used to:
--Simulate pharmacological treatment: one can potentially predict side
effects of the drug by looking at the topological properties of nodes
in a drug-treated network, meaning with that a network in which a drug-
targeted node (protein) was removed. To inhibit a protein (for
instance a kinases) corresponds to removing the node from the network
--Simulate gene deletion: gene deletion implies losing encoded
proteins, thus resulting in the corresponding removal of one or more
nodes from a protein network
-Social and financial networks, where the structure of the network is
naturally modified over time, power grid failures, traffic jam or work
in progress in a road network, temporary closure of an airport in an
airline network

For more information visit:
http://www.cbmc.it/~scardonig/interference/Interference.php
or contact the development team: giovanni,scard...@gmail.com

This work developed at the University of Italy, Center for Biomedical
Computing (CBMC).
Funding: Fondazione Cariverona, CBMC, AIRC, MIUR 2009.