NemoProfile: Effective representation for network motif and their instances

In systems biology, network motif is defined as a frequent and unique subgraph pattern in a network and has been applied in various biological and medical problems. However, identifying network motifs is intrinsically very costly, which restricts extensive and exhaustive experiments for real problems. Furthermore, most algorithms and tools provide limited information regarding network motifs, which necessitates the more expensive post-processing step to apply to real-world problems. Consequently, these problems bring a certain amount of skepticism about the relevance of network motifs in investigating real biological problems. Therefore, this paper introduces NemoProfile (network motif profile) as a new and effective network motif representation. Experimental results show that NemoProfile is generated almost effortlessly during motif-finding process, but it significantly reduces post-processing time for real applications. We also provide a case study to demonstrate the usability of NemoProfile for predicting essential proteins from proteinprotein interaction networks.