Introduction

ARACNE (Algorithm for the Reconstruction of Accurate Cellular Networks), a novel algorithm, using microarray expression profiles, specifically designed to scale up to the complexity of regulatory networks in mammalian cells, yet general enough to address a wider range of network deconvolution problems. This method uses an information theoretic approach to eliminate the vast majority of indirect interactions typically inferred by pairwise analysis.

On synthetic datasets ARACNE achieves extremely low error rates and significantly outperforms established methods, such as Relevance Networks and Bayesian Networks. Application to the deconvolution of genetic networks in human B cells demonstrates ARACNE’s ability to infer validated transcriptional targets of the c-MYC proto-oncogene.

Application Download

Please select suitable package to download based on your computer Operating System:

aracne.exe: Windows executable

aracne: Linux executable

aracne.bin: Mac PPC executable

ARACNE-java.jar: Platform independent executable Java jar-file (requires Java SE 5.0)

Sample data:

Arraydata10x336.exp

Arraydata10x336.adj

aracne.zip: a zip file that includes all of the above files as well as a Java Based Graphical User Interface (GUI). IMPORTANT: Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the JDK installation and use launch_aracne.bat or launch_aracne.sh to start the GUI

Documentation and Support:

See http://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v1/n2/abs/nprot.2006.106.html or Download PDF and Supplemental Documents for detailed usage instructions.

Usage Summary:

aracne [OPTIONS] ... or

java -jar ARACNE-java.jar [OPTIONS]

ARACNE options:

-i <file> Input gene expression profile dataset

-o <file> Output file name (optional) [*]

-j <file> Existing adjacency matrix (.adj) file

-a <accurate|fast> Algorithm (accurate | fast), default: accurate

-k <kernel width> Kernel width (accurate method only), default: determined by program

-b <# bins> No. of bins (fast method only), default: 6

-t <threshold> MI threshold, default: 0

-p <p-value> P-value for MI threshold (e.g. 1e-7), default: 1 [**]

-e <tolerance> DPI tolerance, default: 1

-h <probeId> Hub gene (only MI w/ hub gene will be computed), default: NONE

-r <sample number> Use resampling arrays

-s <file> A file containing a list of probes for which a subnetwork will be
constructed, default: NONE

-l <file> A file containing a list of probes annotated as transcription
factors in the input dataset, default: NONE [***]

-c <+/-probeId %> Conditional network reconstruction, default: NONE [****]
[format: "+24 0.35", "-1973_s_at 0.4"]

-f <mean> <cv> Gene filter by the mean and coefficient of variance (cv) of the
expression values, default: mean=0, cv=0

-H <ARACNE_HOME> To specify where the ARACNE configuration files locates,
default: current working directory

--help Display this help and exit

[*] If no output file is specified by the user, an output will be automatically generated in
the same directory as the input file by appending some of the parameter values, such as
kernel width, MI threshold, tolerance and so on, at the end of the input file name, and
changing the file extension to ".adj".

[**] If the "-t" option is supplied, it will enforce the program to use the specified MI
threshold, therefore the "-p" option will be ignored. Otherwise, the program will
automatically determines the MI threshold given the p-value. The default, p-value=1, will
preserve all pairwise MI.

[***] This option is ideal for transcriptional network reconstruction. If provided, DPI will not
remove any connection of a transcription factor (TF) by connections between two probes not
annotated as TFs. This option is often used in conjunction with '-s', which specifies a list
of probes that are either the same or a subset of the probes specified by '-l'.

[****] Conditional network reconstructs the network given a specified probe being most expressed or
least expressed. In the format that follows "-c", "probeId" indicate the probe to be
conditioned on; "+" or "-" specify whether the upper or lower tail of the probe's expression
should be used as the condition, and "%" is a percentage between (0, 1) specifying the
proportion of samples used as the conditioning subset.
Example useage:"-c +24 0.35", "-c -1973_s_at 0.4

Relevant Publications

1) Reverse engineering cellular networks. Nature Protocols 1, 662 - 671 (2006). (Download PDF) (Supplemental Documents)

2) Reverse engineering of regulatory networks in human B cells.   Nature Genetics. 2005 Apr;37(4):382-90. (Download PDF)

3) ARACNE:  An Algorithm for the Reconstruction of Gene Regulatory Networks in a Mammalian Cellular Context.  
In press in BMC Bioinformatic. (Download PDF)

4) On The Reconstruction of Interaction Networks with Applications to Transcriptional Regulation.
 http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.MN/0410036. Accepted in NIPS 2005

5) Conditional Network Analysis Identifies Candidate Regulator Genes in Human B Cells.
  http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/?0411003. Submitted to RECOMB 2005