Abstract
Drug addiction, a growing problem worldwide with recent concerns, results in long-lasting harmful effects to the human brain. Methamphetamine (MA) and Heroin (HER) are illicit drugs known to exert neurotoxic effects on the dopaminergic systems leading to the development of tolerance and physical dependence. Although many factors affecting addictive processes and drug-induced gene expression changes in the brain have been analyzed, comparing protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks exposure to drugs of abuse may provide new insights into the development of addiction from the systematic point of view. In this study, based on PPI information and gene expression profiles, a dynamic model is employed to reconstruct three PPI networks corresponding to chronic treatment with saline (SAL), MA, and HER, respectively. Subsequently, we compare the difference of network structure and compute the total changed interactions (TCI) and differential interactive ability (DIA) from MA-treated and HER-treated PPI networks versus SAL-treated PPI network to discover potential proteins that play critical roles in MA and HER addictive process, respectively. This comparison method can be employed as a pre-experiment screening approach to reveal new potential proteins for further characterization to understand the underlying mechanisms in addictive process, serving as the starting point of therapeutic intervention for drug addiction.