How to identify important nodes in a network?

A basic assumption is that changes in nodes that occupy key positions within a network will have a greater impact on the overall network structure than changes in relatively isolated positions. In graph theory, measures of centrality are used to identify the most important nodes based on their positions. OmicsAnalyst provides two most widely used node centrality measures - degree and betweenness.

  • The degree of a node is the number of connections it has to other nodes. Nodes with a high degree act as hubs within the network.
  • The betweenness of a node is the number of paths that pass through it when considering the pairwise shortest paths between all nodes in the network. A node that occurs between two dense clusters will have a high betweenness, even if it has a low degree.

Note, you can sort the node table based on either degree or betweenness values by double clicking the corresponding column header.