Network-Constrained Eigen-Single-Cell Profile Estimation for Uncovering Crucial Immunogene Regulatory Systems in Human Bone Marrow

We focus on characterizing cell lines from young and aged-healthy and -AML (acute myeloid leukemia) cell lines, and our goal is to identify the key markers associated with the progression of AML. To characterize the age-related phenotypes in AML cell lines, we consider eigenCell analysis that effectively encapsulates the primary expression level patterns across the cell lines. However, earlier investigations utilizing eigenGenes and eigenCells analysis were based on linear combination of all features, leading to the disturbance from noise features. Moreover, the analysis based on a fully dense loading matrix makes it challenging to interpret the results of eigenCells analysis. In order to address these challenges, we develop a novel computational approach termed network-constrained eigenCells profile estimation, which employs a sparse learning strategy. The proposed method estimates eigenCell based on not only the lasso but also network constrained penalization. The use of the network-constrained penalization enables us to simultaneously select neighborhood genes. Furthermore, the hub genes and their regulator/target genes are easily selected as crucial markers for eigenCells estimation. That is, our method can incorporate insights from network biology into the process of sparse loading estimation. Through our methodology, we estimate sparse eigenCells profiles, where only critical markers exhibit expression levels. This allows us to identify the key markers associated with a specific phenotype. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate the efficacy of our method in reconstructing the sparse structure of eigenCells profiles. We employed our approach to unveil the regulatory system of immunogenes in both young/aged-healthy and -AML cell lines. The markers we have identified for the age-related phenotype in both healthy and AML cell lines have garnered strong support from previous studies. Specifically, our findings, in conjunction with the existing literature, indicate that the activities within this subnetwork of CD79A could be pivotal in elucidating the mechanism driving AML progression, particularly noting the significant role played by the diminished activities in the CD79A subnetwork. We expect that the proposed method will be a useful tool for characterizing disease-related subsets of cell lines, encompassing phenotypes and clones.