Mapping the Human “Dieseasome”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/05/science/20080506_DISEASE.html
We are plagued with diseases that affect nearly every part of the body. Each has a unique attack on one or more organs and there are entire fields of study dedicated to learning more about them. The above interactive article from the New York Times shows a connected graph of many of the major diseases and how they connect to each other. It looks at only genetic diseases as the easiest way to relate them is by shared genes. The diseases are represented by the nodes on the graph with size correlating to number of genes it affects. The nodes are connected by gray squares as edges which represent genes that are shared by both diseases.
This graph exhibits some of the basic aspects of graph theory we talked about in class. There are multiple clusters of nodes that are more or less distinct. For instance, the “cancer” section is a tightly wound ball full of communal genes that connect five, six, or seven cancers at one time. This is similar to the dojo example used in class. Just as there were two distinct groups in the dojo, each with a focal node that wasn’t directly connected to the other focal node, there are the distinct groups in the disease graph. The focal disease nodes are also unconnected directly; it takes multiple steps to get from “Mental Retardation” to “Colon Cancer”. It is interesting to note that there are quite a few local bridges that could possibly even be global. If the connections between “Cardiomyopathy – Lipodystrophy” and “Usher Syndrome – Retinitis Pigmentosa” were severed the entire graph would be split into two completely isolated halves. It is remarkable to see how interconnected many of the diseases we commonly think of as confined are; Epilepsy is only one step from Obesity.