Maryam Ramazani, PhD

Topological Characterization of Protein-Protein Interaction Networks Using Graph Theory

Maryam Ramazani, Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed, PhD. Industrial & Management Systems Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks are central to understanding cellular function and disease mechanisms. In this project, we construct a PPI graph using a curated subset of high-confidence interactions and analyze its topological structure using classical graph-theoretic measures. The network is built as an undirected weighted graph, with interaction confidence scores as edge weights. We compute node-level metrics including degree, strength, clustering coefficient, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector centrality, and PageRank. We identify hub proteins and explore their roles in key biological pathways using open-source tools such as NetworkX and matplotlib. This lightweight analysis pipeline serves as a reproducible template for students and researchers seeking to explore biological networks without requiring deep learning or high-performance computing resources. All code, demo datasets, and output visualizations are publicly available to support educational and translational applications.