Continuous Time Bayesian Networks for Gene Network Reconstruction: a Comparative Study on Time Course Data

Dynamic aspects of regulatory networks are typically investigated by measuring relevant variables at multiple points in time. Current state-of-the-art approaches for gene network reconstruction directly build on such data, making the strong assumption that the system evolves in a synchronous fashion and in discrete time. However, omics data generated with increasing time-course granularity allow to model gene networks as systems whose state evolves in continuous time, thus improving the model's expressiveness. In this work continuous time Bayesian networks are proposed as a new approach for regulatory network reconstruction from time-course expression data. Their performance is compared to that of two state-of-the-art methods: dynamic Bayesian networks and Granger causality. The comparison is accomplished using both simulated and experimental data. Continuous time Bayesian networks achieve the highest F-measure on both datasets. Furthermore, precision, recall and F-measure degrade in a smoother way than those of dynamic Bayesian networks and Granger causality, when the complexity of the gene regulatory network increases