WDN finder: A method for minimum driver node set detection and analysis in directed and weighted biological network

Structural controllability is the generalization of traditional controllability for dynamical systems. During the last decade, interesting biological discoveries have been inferred by applied structural controllability analysis to biological networks. However, false positive/negative information (i.e. nodes and edges) widely exists in biological networks that documented in public data sources, which can hinder accurate analysis of structural controllability. In this study, we propose WDN finder, a comprehensive analysis package that provides structural controllability with consideration of node connection strength in biological networks. When applied to the human cancer signaling network and p53-mediate DNA damage response network, WDN finder shows high accuracy on essential nodes prediction in these networks. Compared to existing methods, WDN finder can significantly narrow down the set of minimum driver node set (MDS) under the restriction of domain knowledge. When using p53-mediate DNA damage response network as illustration, we find more meaningful MDSs by WDN finder. The source code is implemented in python and publicly available together with relevant data on GitHub: https://github.com/dustincys/WDN finder.