GeneMANIA answers three main types of biological questions by searching diverse network data types, such as physical, predicted and co-expression interactions. Given a single gene, GeneMANIA will find the most closely connected genes. If the function of the query gene is poorly characterized, identifying interacting genes of known function helps predict the function of the unknown gene (7). Given a query list of genes, GeneMANIA will find more genes like those in the list. In this use, GeneMANIA can be thought of as a ‘gene recommender system’ (4), similar to book (or music or movie) recommender systems, which suggest other books (music or movies) that you might like based on your past selections. If the query list is long enough (see the section on network weighting), GeneMANIA can suggest related genes using the types of connections that strongly connect the query genes. For example, if the query genes are part of a protein complex, GeneMANIA will predict additional members of that complex using primarily physical interactions (which highly connect the query genes); or if the query genes are protein kinases,
