TY - JOUR AU - Klein, Jon P. AU - Sun, Zhifu AU - Staff, Nathan P. PY - 2019 DA - 2019/12/20 TI - Association between ALS and retroviruses: evidence from bioinformatics analysis JO - BMC Bioinformatics SP - 680 VL - 20 IS - 24 AB - Emerging evidence suggests retroviruses play a role in the pathophysiology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Specifically, activation of ancient viral genes embedded in the human genome is theorized to lead to motor neuron degeneration. We explore whether connections exist between ALS and retroviruses through protein interaction networks (PIN) and pathway analysis, and consider the potential roles in drug target discovery. Protein database and pathway/network analytical software including Ingenuity Pathway BioProfiler, STRING, and CytoScape were utilized to identify overlapping protein interaction networks and extract core cluster (s) of retroviruses and ALS. SN - 1471-2105 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-019-3249-8 DO - 10.1186/s12859-019-3249-8 ID - Klein2019 ER -