Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras' Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBC-DSAI) have developed a computational approach known as 'MultiCens' to better understand the interactions between genes that are responsible for inter-organ communication within the body.

Communication between cells in various tissues and organs is critical to multicellular life. Although the molecular basis of such communication has long been studied, genome-wide searches for genes and other biomolecules that mediate tissue-tissue signalling are lacking.

IIT Madras researchers developed 'MultiCens' (Multilayer/Multi-tissue network Centrality measures) to systematically identify inter-tissue mediators. The exchange of information between organs and tissues of the body is essential for all living organisms' proper functioning and survival.

Professor B Ravindran, Mindtree Faculty Fellow and Head, RBC-DSAI, IIT Madras, highlighted the important applications of this research, saying, "Much of the research on the Inter-organ Communication Network (ICN) has primarily involved experiments on model organisms like the fruit fly, which may not directly apply to humans and other non-model organisms."

Furthermore, due to the numerous interactions between biomolecules in different tissues, the experimental techniques used can be time-consuming. As a result, our understanding of the ICN is currently lacking."

Professor Manikandan Narayanan, faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras, a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Fellow, and the study's corresponding author, elaborated on the significance of this research.

“The importance of our MultiCens method lies in its ability to identify the key genes in the ICN in various healthy or disease conditions. At the heart of MultiCens are network science algorithms that quantify the importance of genes within a tissue as well as across multiple tissues in a hierarchical fashion.

This method was developed as a focused team effort among all authors of the paper, with especially close interactions between the members in my Bioinformatics and Integrative Data Science (BIRDS) lab - Dr Tarun Kumar, then a PhD student, and Dr Sanga Mitra, a senior project scientist”.

MultiCens can be applied to other healthy and disease genomic settings as well. MultiCens source code is openly available, and ongoing work on web interface to the method and experimental validation of its predictions can further enable a comprehensive understanding of the ICN and its role in overall health and well-being.