We consider the problem of estimating high-dimensional Gaussian graphical
models corresponding to a single set of variables under several distinct
conditions. This problem is motivated by the task of recovering transcriptional
regulatory networks on the basis of gene expression data {containing
heterogeneous samples, such as different disease states, multiple species, or
different developmental stages}. We assume that most aspects of the conditional
dependence networks are shared, but that there are some structured differences
between them. Rather than assuming that similarities and differences between
networks are driven by individual edges, we take a node-based approach, which
in many cases provides a more intuitive interpretation of the network
differences. We consider estimation under two distinct assumptions: (1)
differences between the K networks are due to individual nodes that are
perturbed across conditions, or (2) similarities among the K networks are due
to the presence of common hub nodes that are shared across all K networks.
Using a row-column overlap norm penalty function, we formulate two convex
optimization problems that correspond to these two assumptions. We solve these
problems using an alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm, and we
derive a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that allows us to decompose
the problem into independent subproblems so that our algorithm can be scaled to
high-dimensional settings. Our proposal is illustrated on synthetic data, a
webpage data set, and a brain cancer gene expression data set.

该论文探究了高维高斯图形模型估计问题，提出了两种假设：网络差异源于被扰动的个别节点或在所有网络中共享的公共中心节点，然后使用凸优化问题和多重乘数算法解决，并以合成数据、网页数据和癌症基因表达数据为例进行说明。