{% extends "base.html" %} {% import "bootstrap/wtf.html" as wtf %} {% import "bootstrap/fixes.html" as fixes %} {% import "bootstrap/utils.html" as util %} {% block title %}How to Use BEL Commons{% endblock %} {% block content %}
BEL Commons hosts biological knowledge assemblies that are encoded in Biological Expression Language. BEL supports the assembly of context-specific qualitative causal and correlative relations between biological entities across multiple modes and scales in BEL Script with provenance information, external namespace references, relation provenance (citation and evidence), and relation metadata such as the biological context (anatomy, cell, disease, etc.).
On the home page, click Parse BEL. In the form, choose a file, then click "upload".
The link to the BEL Script used in this video can be found here.
Users can create projects that allow them to easily share networks with groups of other users. This is useful when multiple curators are uploading related BEL Scripts. Later, they can be assembled and queried.
Large terminologies that are curated for projects investigating new diseases and pathologies can be validated by checking their contents using the Ontology Lookup Service, provided by the EBI to identify duplicate names and enable better semantic integration.
From the home page, click List Networks, find your network, and select "Summarize".
This web application organizes high level statistical information about a network, such as the number of nodes, edges, author contributions, citation contributions, and provenance information as well as global network statistics such as the average node degree, network density, number of weakly connected components, etc. When appropriate, it proves feedback on syntax and semantics of the source BEL document to assist in curation.
Finally, the summary page provides an assessment of the "Biological Grammar", or the biological validity of statements. These analysis include identification of contradictory edges, unstable biological motifs in pairs and triplets of nodes, and other information that is inferred to be missing or incomplete.
A query contain three steps:
Finally, the results of queries can be summarized, downloaded in many formats, or explored.
The results of query can be explored interactively with the Biological Network Explorer. Its tools panel contains an extended query builder interface that can be used to apply additional transformations. Network algorithms can be readily applied to networks such as path searches, centrality calculations, and overlaying of external data. These data can come from differential expression experiments, or directly from the results of the Heat Diffusion workflow, which is explained below.
Data sets like differential gene expression can be used to quantify the perturbation amplitude of biological processes in a network using an randomized algorithm based on NPA. Candidate upstream mechanisms are generated for each biological process and a heat diffusion algorithm is used to quantify the cumulative observed effect of upstream genes and gene products based on the differential gene expression data.
This algorithm is general enough that other data types could be used, such as copy number variations on SNPs or clinical measurements of neuro-imaging features, which have been annotated to our Alzheimer Disease Knowledge assembly with NeuroMMSigDB.
Data sets can be directly uploaded and analyzed. The results of these experiments can then be directly overlaid to the interactive network viewer to provide a data-driven analysis of given networks or sub-networks.