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Dive into the research topics where Ali Shojaie is active.

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Featured researches published by Ali Shojaie.


Bioinformatics | 2010

Discovering graphical Granger causality using the truncating lasso penalty

Ali Shojaie; George Michailidis

Motivation: Components of biological systems interact with each other in order to carry out vital cell functions. Such information can be used to improve estimation and inference, and to obtain better insights into the underlying cellular mechanisms. Discovering regulatory interactions among genes is therefore an important problem in systems biology. Whole-genome expression data over time provides an opportunity to determine how the expression levels of genes are affected by changes in transcription levels of other genes, and can therefore be used to discover regulatory interactions among genes. Results: In this article, we propose a novel penalization method, called truncating lasso, for estimation of causal relationships from time-course gene expression data. The proposed penalty can correctly determine the order of the underlying time series, and improves the performance of the lasso-type estimators. Moreover, the resulting estimate provides information on the time lag between activation of transcription factors and their effects on regulated genes. We provide an efficient algorithm for estimation of model parameters, and show that the proposed method can consistently discover causal relationships in the large p, small n setting. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated favorably in simulated, as well as real, data examples. Availability: The proposed truncating lasso method is implemented in the R-package ‘grangerTlasso’ and is freely available at http://www.stat.lsa.umich.edu/∼shojaie/ Contact: [email protected]


Journal of Computational Biology | 2009

Analysis of gene sets based on the underlying regulatory network.

Ali Shojaie; George Michailidis

Networks are often used to represent the interactions among genes and proteins. These interactions are known to play an important role in vital cell functions and should be included in the analysis of genes that are differentially expressed. Methods of gene set analysis take advantage of external biological information and analyze a priori defined sets of genes. These methods can potentially preserve the correlation among genes; however, they do not directly incorporate the information about the gene network. In this paper, we propose a latent variable model that directly incorporates the network information. We then use the theory of mixed linear models to present a general inference framework for the problem of testing the significance of subnetworks. Several possible test procedures are introduced and a network based method for testing the changes in expression levels of genes as well as the structure of the network is presented. The performance of the proposed method is compared with methods of gene set analysis using both simulation studies, as well as real data on genes related to the galactose utilization pathway in yeast.


PLOS ONE | 2011

Metabolomic Profiling Reveals a Role for Androgen in Activating Amino Acid Metabolism and Methylation in Prostate Cancer Cells

Nagireddy Putluri; Ali Shojaie; Vihas T. Vasu; Srilatha Nalluri; Shaiju K. Vareed; Vasanta Putluri; Anuradha Vivekanandan-Giri; Jeman Byun; Subramaniam Pennathur; Theodore R. Sana; Steven M. Fischer; Ganesh S. Palapattu; Chad J. Creighton; George Michailidis; Arun Sreekumar

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related death in American men. Development and progression of clinically localized prostate cancer is highly dependent on androgen signaling. Metastatic tumors are initially responsive to anti-androgen therapy, however become resistant to this regimen upon progression. Genomic and proteomic studies have implicated a role for androgen in regulating metabolic processes in prostate cancer. However, there have been no metabolomic profiling studies conducted thus far that have examined androgen-regulated biochemical processes in prostate cancer. Here, we have used unbiased metabolomic profiling coupled with enrichment-based bioprocess mapping to obtain insights into the biochemical alterations mediated by androgen in prostate cancer cell lines. Our findings indicate that androgen exposure results in elevation of amino acid metabolism and alteration of methylation potential in prostate cancer cells. Further, metabolic phenotyping studies confirm higher flux through pathways associated with amino acid metabolism in prostate cancer cells treated with androgen. These findings provide insight into the potential biochemical processes regulated by androgen signaling in prostate cancer. Clinically, if validated, these pathways could be exploited to develop therapeutic strategies that supplement current androgen ablative treatments while the observed androgen-regulated metabolic signatures could be employed as biomarkers that presage the development of castrate-resistant prostate cancer.


Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology | 2010

Network Enrichment Analysis in Complex Experiments

Ali Shojaie; George Michailidis

Cellular functions of living organisms are carried out through complex systems of interacting components. Including such interactions in the analysis, and considering sub-systems defined by biological pathways instead of individual components (e.g. genes), can lead to new findings about complex biological mechanisms. Networks are often used to capture such interactions and can be incorporated in models to improve the efficiency in estimation and inference. In this paper, we propose a model for incorporating external information about interactions among genes (proteins/metabolites) in differential analysis of gene sets. We exploit the framework of mixed linear models and propose a flexible inference procedure for analysis of changes in biological pathways. The proposed method facilitates the analysis of complex experiments, including multiple experimental conditions and temporal correlations among observations. We propose an efficient iterative algorithm for estimation of the model parameters and show that the proposed framework is asymptotically robust to the presence of noise in the network information. The performance of the proposed model is illustrated through the analysis of gene expression data for environmental stress response (ESR) in yeast, as well as simulated data sets.


Proceedings of the Nutrition Society | 2013

Inter-individual differences in response to dietary intervention: integrating omics platforms towards personalised dietary recommendations

Johanna W. Lampe; Sandi L. Navarro; Meredith A. J. Hullar; Ali Shojaie

Technologic advances now make it possible to collect large amounts of genetic, epigenetic, metabolomic and gut microbiome data. These data have the potential to transform approaches towards nutrition counselling by allowing us to recognise and embrace the metabolic, physiologic and genetic differences among individuals. The ultimate goal is to be able to integrate these multi-dimensional data so as to characterise the health status and disease risk of an individual and to provide personalised recommendations to maximise health. To this end, accurate and predictive systems-based measures of health are needed that incorporate molecular signatures of genes, transcripts, proteins, metabolites and microbes. Although we are making progress within each of these omics arenas, we have yet to integrate effectively multiple sources of biologic data so as to provide comprehensive phenotypic profiles. Observational studies have provided some insights into associative interactions between genetic or phenotypic variation and diet and their impact on health; however, very few human experimental studies have addressed these relationships. Dietary interventions that test prescribed diets in well-characterised study populations and that monitor system-wide responses (ideally using several omics platforms) are needed to make correlation-causation connections and to characterise phenotypes under controlled conditions. Given the growth in our knowledge, there is the potential to develop personalised dietary recommendations. However, developing these recommendations assumes that an improved understanding of the phenotypic complexities of individuals and their responses to the complexities of their diets will lead to a sustainable, effective approach to promote health and prevent disease - therein lies our challenge.


Journal of Proteome Research | 2014

Metabolomic profiling identifies biochemical pathways associated with castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Akash K. Kaushik; Shaiju K. Vareed; Sumanta Basu; Vasanta Putluri; Nagireddy Putluri; Katrin Panzitt; Christine Brennan; Arul M. Chinnaiyan; Ismael A. Vergara; Nicholas Erho; Nancy L. Weigel; Nicholas Mitsiades; Ali Shojaie; Ganesh S. Palapattu; George Michailidis; Arun Sreekumar

Despite recent developments in treatment strategies, castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) is still the second leading cause of cancer-associated mortality among American men, the biological underpinnings of which are not well understood. To this end, we measured levels of 150 metabolites and examined the rate of utilization of 184 metabolites in metastatic androgen-dependent prostate cancer (AD) and CRPC cell lines using a combination of targeted mass spectrometry and metabolic phenotyping. Metabolic data were used to derive biochemical pathways that were enriched in CRPC, using Oncomine concept maps (OCM). The enriched pathways were then examined in-silico for their association with treatment failure (i.e., prostate specific antigen (PSA) recurrence or biochemical recurrence) using published clinically annotated gene expression data sets. Our results indicate that a total of 19 metabolites were altered in CRPC compared to AD cell lines. These altered metabolites mapped to a highly interconnected network of biochemical pathways that describe UDP glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) activity. We observed an association with time to treatment failure in an analysis employing genes restricted to this pathway in three independent gene expression data sets. In summary, our studies highlight the value of employing metabolomic strategies in cell lines to derive potentially clinically useful predictive tools.


PLOS ONE | 2014

Inferring Regulatory Networks by Combining Perturbation Screens and Steady State Gene Expression Profiles

Ali Shojaie; Alexandra Jauhiainen; Michael G. Kallitsis; George Michailidis

Reconstructing transcriptional regulatory networks is an important task in functional genomics. Data obtained from experiments that perturb genes by knockouts or RNA interference contain useful information for addressing this reconstruction problem. However, such data can be limited in size and/or are expensive to acquire. On the other hand, observational data of the organism in steady state (e.g., wild-type) are more readily available, but their informational content is inadequate for the task at hand. We develop a computational approach to appropriately utilize both data sources for estimating a regulatory network. The proposed approach is based on a three-step algorithm to estimate the underlying directed but cyclic network, that uses as input both perturbation screens and steady state gene expression data. In the first step, the algorithm determines causal orderings of the genes that are consistent with the perturbation data, by combining an exhaustive search method with a fast heuristic that in turn couples a Monte Carlo technique with a fast search algorithm. In the second step, for each obtained causal ordering, a regulatory network is estimated using a penalized likelihood based method, while in the third step a consensus network is constructed from the highest scored ones. Extensive computational experiments show that the algorithm performs well in reconstructing the underlying network and clearly outperforms competing approaches that rely only on a single data source. Further, it is established that the algorithm produces a consistent estimate of the regulatory network.


Nature Communications | 2016

Inhibition of the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway promotes castration-resistant prostate cancer

Akash K. Kaushik; Ali Shojaie; Katrin Panzitt; Rajni Sonavane; Harene Venghatakrishnan; Mohan Manikkam; Alexander Zaslavsky; Vasanta Putluri; Vihas T. Vasu; Yiqing Zhang; Ayesha S. Khan; Stacy M. Lloyd; Adam T. Szafran; Subhamoy Dasgupta; David A. Bader; Fabio Stossi; Hangwen Li; Susmita Samanta; Xuhong Cao; Efrosini Tsouko; Shixia Huang; Daniel E. Frigo; Lawrence Chan; Dean P. Edwards; Benny Abraham Kaipparettu; Nicholas Mitsiades; Nancy L. Weigel; Michael A. Mancini; Sean E. McGuire; Rohit Mehra

The precise molecular alterations driving castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) are not clearly understood. Using a novel network-based integrative approach, here, we show distinct alterations in the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway (HBP) to be critical for CRPC. Expression of HBP enzyme glucosamine-phosphate N-acetyltransferase 1 (GNPNAT1) is found to be significantly decreased in CRPC compared with localized prostate cancer (PCa). Genetic loss-of-function of GNPNAT1 in CRPC-like cells increases proliferation and aggressiveness, in vitro and in vivo. This is mediated by either activation of the PI3K-AKT pathway in cells expressing full-length androgen receptor (AR) or by specific protein 1 (SP1)-regulated expression of carbohydrate response element-binding protein (ChREBP) in cells containing AR-V7 variant. Strikingly, addition of the HBP metabolite UDP-N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) to CRPC-like cells significantly decreases cell proliferation, both in-vitro and in animal studies, while also demonstrates additive efficacy when combined with enzalutamide in-vitro. These observations demonstrate the therapeutic value of targeting HBP in CRPC.


Developmental Neuroscience | 2015

Serial Plasma Metabolites Following Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy in a Nonhuman Primate Model

Pattaraporn Tanya Chun; Ronald J. McPherson; Luke C. Marney; Sahar Z. Zangeneh; Brendon A. Parsons; Ali Shojaie; Robert E. Synovec; Sandra E. Juul

Biomarkers that indicate the severity of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury and response to treatment and that predict neurodevelopmental outcomes are urgently needed to improve the care of affected neonates. We hypothesize that sequentially obtained plasma metabolomes will provide indicators of brain injury and repair, allowing for the prediction of neurodevelopmental outcomes. A total of 33 Macaca nemestrina underwent 0, 15 or 18 min of in utero umbilical cord occlusion (UCO) to induce hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and were then delivered by hysterotomy, resuscitated and stabilized. Serial blood samples were obtained at baseline (cord blood) and at 0.1, 24, 48, and 72 h of age. Treatment groups included nonasphyxiated controls (n = 7), untreated UCO (n = 11), UCO + hypothermia (HT; n = 6), and UCO + HT + erythropoietin (n = 9). Metabolites were extracted and analyzed using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry and quantified by PARAFAC (parallel factor analysis). Using nontargeted discovery-based methods, we identified 63 metabolites as potential biomarkers. The changes in metabolite concentrations were characterized and compared between treatment groups. Further comparison determined that 8 metabolites (arachidonic acid, butanoic acid, citric acid, fumaric acid, lactate, malate, propanoic acid, and succinic acid) correlated with early and/or long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes. The combined outcomes of death or cerebral palsy correlated with citric acid, fumaric acid, lactate, and propanoic acid. This change in circulating metabolome after UCO may reflect cellular metabolism and biochemical changes in response to the severity of brain injury and have potential to predict neurodevelopmental outcomes.


Biodata Mining | 2013

Using random walks to identify cancer-associated modules in expression data

Deanna Petrochilos; Ali Shojaie; John H. Gennari; Neil F. Abernethy

BackgroundThe etiology of cancer involves a complex series of genetic and environmental conditions. To better represent and study the intricate genetics of cancer onset and progression, we construct a network of biological interactions to search for groups of genes that compose cancer-related modules. Three cancer expression datasets are investigated to prioritize genes and interactions associated with cancer outcomes. Using a graph-based approach to search for communities of phenotype-related genes in microarray data, we find modules of genes associated with cancer phenotypes in a weighted interaction network.ResultsWe implement Walktrap, a random-walk-based community detection algorithm, to identify biological modules predisposing to tumor growth in 22 hepatocellular carcinoma samples (GSE14520), adenoma development in 32 colorectal cancer samples (GSE8671), and prognosis in 198 breast cancer patients (GSE7390). For each study, we find the best scoring partitions under a maximum cluster size of 200 nodes. Significant modules highlight groups of genes that are functionally related to cancer and show promise as therapeutic targets; these include interactions among transcription factors (SPIB, RPS6KA2 and RPS6KA6), cell-cycle regulatory genes (BRSK1, WEE1 and CDC25C), modulators of the cell-cycle and proliferation (CBLC and IRS2) and genes that regulate and participate in the map-kinase pathway (MAPK9, DUSP1, DUSP9, RIPK2). To assess the performance of Walktrap to find genomic modules (Walktrap-GM), we evaluate our results against other tools recently developed to discover disease modules in biological networks. Compared with other highly cited module-finding tools, jActiveModules and Matisse, Walktrap-GM shows strong performance in the discovery of modules enriched with known cancer genes.ConclusionsThese results demonstrate that the Walktrap-GM algorithm identifies modules significantly enriched with cancer genes, their joint effects and promising candidate genes. The approach performs well when evaluated against similar tools and smaller overall module size allows for more specific functional annotation and facilitates the interpretation of these modules.

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Vasanta Putluri

Baylor College of Medicine

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Johanna W. Lampe

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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Alex Tank

University of Washington

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Arun Sreekumar

Georgia Regents University

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Katrin Panzitt

Baylor College of Medicine

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Meredith A. J. Hullar

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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Nagireddy Putluri

Baylor College of Medicine

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Vihas T. Vasu

Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda

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