11,158 research outputs found
Bayesian variable selection and data integration for biological regulatory networks
A substantial focus of research in molecular biology are gene regulatory
networks: the set of transcription factors and target genes which control the
involvement of different biological processes in living cells. Previous
statistical approaches for identifying gene regulatory networks have used gene
expression data, ChIP binding data or promoter sequence data, but each of these
resources provides only partial information. We present a Bayesian hierarchical
model that integrates all three data types in a principled variable selection
framework. The gene expression data are modeled as a function of the unknown
gene regulatory network which has an informed prior distribution based upon
both ChIP binding and promoter sequence data. We also present a variable
weighting methodology for the principled balancing of multiple sources of prior
information. We apply our procedure to the discovery of gene regulatory
relationships in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Yeast) for which we can use several
external sources of information to validate our results. Our inferred
relationships show greater biological relevance on the external validation
measures than previous data integration methods. Our model also estimates
synergistic and antagonistic interactions between transcription factors, many
of which are validated by previous studies. We also evaluate the results from
our procedure for the weighting for multiple sources of prior information.
Finally, we discuss our methodology in the context of previous approaches to
data integration and Bayesian variable selection.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOAS130 the Annals of
Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
A cDNA Microarray Gene Expression Data Classifier for Clinical Diagnostics Based on Graph Theory
Despite great advances in discovering cancer molecular profiles, the proper application of microarray technology to routine clinical diagnostics is still a challenge. Current practices in the classification of microarrays' data show two main limitations: the reliability of the training data sets used to build the classifiers, and the classifiers' performances, especially when the sample to be classified does not belong to any of the available classes. In this case, state-of-the-art algorithms usually produce a high rate of false positives that, in real diagnostic applications, are unacceptable. To address this problem, this paper presents a new cDNA microarray data classification algorithm based on graph theory and is able to overcome most of the limitations of known classification methodologies. The classifier works by analyzing gene expression data organized in an innovative data structure based on graphs, where vertices correspond to genes and edges to gene expression relationships. To demonstrate the novelty of the proposed approach, the authors present an experimental performance comparison between the proposed classifier and several state-of-the-art classification algorithm
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