AUTHOR=Briones Yumi L. , Young Alexander T. , Dayrit Fabian M. , De Jesus Armando Jerome , Rojas Nina Rosario L. 

TITLE=Visualizing Phytochemical-Protein Interaction Networks: Momordica charantia and Cancer

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Bioinformatics

VOLUME=1

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/bioinformatics/articles/10.3389/fbinf.2021.768886

DOI=10.3389/fbinf.2021.768886

ISSN=2673-7647

ABSTRACT=<p>The <italic>in silico</italic> study of medicinal plants is a rapidly growing field. Techniques such as reverse screening and network pharmacology are used to study the complex cellular action of medicinal plants against disease. However, it is difficult to produce a meaningful visualization of phytochemical-protein interactions (PCPIs) in the cell. This study introduces a novel workflow combining various tools to visualize a PCPI network for a medicinal plant against a disease. The five steps are 1) phytochemical compilation, 2) reverse screening, 3) network building, 4) network visualization, and 5) evaluation. The output is a PCPI network that encodes multiple dimensions of information, including subcellular location, phytochemical class, pharmacokinetic data, and prediction probability. As a proof of concept, we built a PCPI network for bitter gourd (<italic>Momordica charantia</italic> L.) against colorectal cancer. The network and workflow are available at <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://yumibriones.github.io/network/" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://yumibriones.github.io/network/</ext-link>. The PCPI network highlights high-confidence interactions for further <italic>in vitro</italic> or <italic>in vivo</italic> study. The overall workflow is broadly transferable and can be used to visualize the action of other medicinal plants or small molecules against other diseases.</p>