How to use ReConn?

Retrieving pathway information:

There are three main ways to retrieve pathway information using ReConn:
Search for a pathway by its name
Grow a pathway by starting with a certain compound
View all reactions

Mapping of data

Data can be mapped using the two following ways:
Expression colouring
PathwayFinder

Colouring nodes by occorunce

Occurence colouring

Various options of interacting with the network in ReConn

Expanding pathway nodes
Retrieving hypothetical neighbours
Calculating alternative routes

Finally one could use a locally installed Reactome database.
Using a local Reactome database

Search for a pathway by its name:

* Select Query database from ReConn in the Plugin menu:


* The Query options dialog appears. Here you can specify which data you want to get from Reactome.


* For instance only get human reactions:


* Then return to the first tab and enter (a part of) the name of the pathway.


* The result:

Selecting the second network:


The circles are reactions, the diamond shapes are pathways and rounded squares are BlackBoxEvents. The edges respresent (one or more) metabolites passing between reactions. The labels in the node are the genes associated with the reaction. The mouse-over gives you the reaction information. Or if you hover over an edge, it gives you the metabolite that is shared between the reactions.


Grow a pathway by starting with a certain compound

Besides selecting a certain pathway one can also "grow" a pathway. You just have to specify the metabolite from which to start. Again only human reactions are chosen.
A valid search term is a case insensitive full name of a compound as it is stored in Reactome.


* result:

Here we have rearranged the pathway nodes for readability.
The rounded square nodes, represent BlackBoxEvents.

View all reactions

One can also select all reactions for visualization at once. Again only human reactions are chosen.



*result:


Expression colouring

Expression data can also be used to colour the nodes:


Here the tab delimited file can be specified that should be used. The first column should contain the ID (e.g. AffyMetrix id) to be used for the mapping. And the column that should be used for colouring is specified with the drop down list.
Example expression colouring file
One can also specify conditions that should be met,  for colouring.


result of Expression colouring on the pathway grown from insulin.

PathwayFinder

Instead of getting a pathway and visualize data on top of it, one can also use the data to find the pathways that are of interest.

Similar as to Expression colouring, ABS is used to specify if the absolute value of the data should be used for the condition.

A new window pops up (after a while). For each pathway the amount of reactions meeting the criteria as well as the total number of reactions are specified.
Select a pathway and click on "Show pathway" to visualize the data on top of that pathway.

Occurence colouring

The occurence of a reaction in different species can be used to colour the nodes. A whiter node occurs in less species.




Expanding pathway nodes

One can open a pathway node by right clicking on the diamond shaped node, to get the contextmenu:


* and select Open Pathway. All reactions in the selected pathway are now added to the current network.


Retrieving hypothetical neighbours

To get the hypothetical neighbours of a node or nodes, select the nodes and right click on them to get the contextmenu.


* result:

The hypothetical neighbours have dashed lines.

Calculating alternative routes

This feature calculates the subgraph containing all routes from one reaction another. The user can specify the maximum pathlength as well as reactions that are not allowed. (For instance reactions that are knocked out)

The most simple way of using this feature is by specifying the "start", "end" and "not using" nodes by using the context menu.
Just select the reaction(s) you want to be the start and select "Start reaction" from the context menu. Do the same for the end reaction(s) and the ones you don't want to use.

ARF_context.png

After you have done this, you can select the Alternate route finder from the ReConn menu. You will see that most of the field have already been filled out.
You will only need to specify the depth of the search.



arf2.png

This results in:

ARF_result.png
You can also enter the values of start, end and not using fields manually by specifying their Reactome ID. It is possible to have multiple start and end points, as well as multiple reactions that should not be used. The numbers should then be seperated by a ;.
The Reactome Id can be found on the Reactome website by looking at the URL.
http://www.reactome.org/cgi-bin/eventbrowser?DB=gk_current&ID=71406&ZOOM=2
The ID is after ID=. So in this case it is: 71406

Using a local Reactome database

A local instance of Reactome can also be used. The MySQL dumps can be found here: sql
ReConn also needs the denormalized database found here: sql_dn
The set this up, the use should put a tab-delimited text file called server.tsv in the Cytoscape main directory NOT THE PLUGIN directory. The file should look have the following layout:

server<tab>databasename<tab>user<tab>password<tab>port
server<tab>databasenameDN<tab>user<tab>password<tab>port

example:
bmi.bmt.tue.nl\treactome\tguest\t\t3306
bmi.bmt.tue.nl\treactome_dn\tguest\t\t3306