RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Decoupling global and local relations in biased biological systems
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 038059
DO 10.1101/038059
A1 Assaf Zaritsky
A1 Uri Obolski
A1 Zuzana Kadlecova
A1 Zhuo Gan
A1 Yi Du
A1 Sandra Schmid
A1 Gaudenz Danuser
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/01/038059.abstract
AB Analysis of coupled variables is a core concept of cell biological inference, with colocalization of two molecules as a proxy for protein interaction being an ubiquitous example. However, external effectors may influence the observed colocalization pattern independently from the local interaction of two proteins. Such global bias is often neglected when interpreting colocalization. Here, we describe DeBias, a computational method to quantify and decouple global bias from local interactions by modeling the observed colocalization between coupled variables as the cumulative contribution of a global and a local component. We demonstrate applications of DeBias in three areas of cell biology at different scales: Analysis of the (1) alignment of vimentin fibers and microtubules in the context of polarized cells; (2) alignment of cell velocity and traction stress during collective migration; and (3) specific recruitment of transmembrane receptors to clathrin-coated pits during endocytosis. The DeBias software package is freely accessible online via a web-server at https://debias.biohpc.swmed.edu1.