BEAMS: backbone extraction and merge strategy for the global many-to-many alignment of multiple PPI networks

Motivation: Global many-to-many alignment of biological networks has been a central problem in comparative biological network studies. Given a set of biological interaction networks, the informal goal is to group together related nodes. For the case of protein-protein interaction networks, such groups are expected to form clusters of functionally orthologous proteins. Construction of such clusters for networks from different species may prove useful in determining evolutionary relationships, in predicting the functions of proteins with unknown functions and in verifying those with estimated functions.