Fig. 1.

An example: From a DGR tripartite network to a co-functional miRNA pair. The network in panel a contains known associations between the genes g1, g2, g3, g4, and g5, the diseases d1, d2, d3, and d4, and the miRNAs R1, R2, R3, and R4. In this example, miRNAs R2 and R3 are both associated with all the four diseases. However, the other three miRNAs are each associated with only one of these diseases. All these four diseases are associated with two common genes g4 and g5. Meanwhile, both of g4 and g5 are the targets of miRNAs R2 and R3. It is believed that R2-R3-g4-g5 in panel b may form a functional module that associated with the development of all the four diseases