PAFway: pairwise associations between functional annotations in biological networks and pathways.

Abstract

Large gene networks can be dense and difficult to interpret in a biologically meaningful way. Here, we introduce PAFway, which estimates pairwise associations between functional annotations in biological networks and pathways. It answers the biological question: do genes that have a specific function tend to regulate genes that have a different specific function? The results can be visualized as a heatmap or a network of biological functions. We apply this package to reveal associations between functional annotations in an Arabidopsis thaliana gene network. PAFway is submitted to CRAN. Currently available here: https://github.com/ezer/PAFway. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.