%0 Journal Article
%T Inferring Network Mechanisms: The Drosophila melanogaster Protein Interaction Network
%A Manuel Middendorf
%A Etay Ziv
%A Chris Wiggins
%J Quantitative Biology
%D 2004
%I arXiv
%R 10.1073/pnas.0409515102
%X Naturally occurring networks exhibit quantitative features revealing underlying growth mechanisms. Numerous network mechanisms have recently been proposed to reproduce specific properties such as degree distributions or clustering coefficients. We present a method for inferring the mechanism most accurately capturing a given network topology, exploiting discriminative tools from machine learning. The Drosophila melanogaster protein network is confidently and robustly (to noise and training data subsampling) classified as a duplication-mutation-complementation network over preferential attachment, small-world, and other duplication-mutation mechanisms. Systematic classification, rather than statistical study of specific properties, provides a discriminative approach to understand the design of complex networks.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0408010v1