Genes in close network proximity to host proteins targeted by EBV and HPV16 viral proteins showed significantly shifted expression patterns in diseases associated with the viral infection and are significantly closer to genes associated with virally implicated diseases than to genes associated with other diseases (Gulbahce, Yan, et al. 2012), leading to the Local Impact Hypothesis, similar to the local neighborhood hypothesis for disease modules (Barabási, Gulbahce, et al. 2011).
