pathwayfocused
Pathwayfocused is a term used in bioinformatics and systems biology to describe an analytical and interpretive approach that centers biological pathways as the primary units of analysis. Unlike gene-centric analyses that focus on individual genes or proteins, pathwayfocused methods aim to assess the collective behavior and activity of predefined molecular pathways to understand phenotypes and disease mechanisms.
Conceptually, pathwayfocused relies on curated pathway collections such as KEGG, Reactome, and WikiPathways, and on computational
Applications include interpreting differential expression results in transcriptomics, characterizing dysregulated pathways in cancer, guiding drug discovery
Advantages include improved interpretability, reduced multiple testing burden, and the ability to capture coordinated responses that
Related concepts are pathway-based enrichment analysis, gene set enrichment analysis, pathway topology analysis, and pathway-centric network