An evolutionary approach for balancing effectiveness and representation level in gene selection

As data mining develops and expands to new application areas, feature selection also reveals various aspects to be considered. This paper underlines two aspects that seem to categorize the large body of available feature selection algorithms: the effectiveness and the representation level. The effectiveness deals with selecting the minimum set of variables that maximize the accuracy of a classifier and the representation level concerns discovering how relevant the variables are for the domain of interest. For balancing the above aspects, the paper proposes an evolutionary framework for feature selection that expresses a hybrid method, organized in layers, each of them exploits a specific model of search strategy. Extensive experiments on gene selection from DNA-microarray datasets are presented and discussed. Results indicate that the framework compares well with different hybrid methods proposed in literature as it has the capability of finding well suited subsets of informative features while improving classification accurac

Incorporating feature ranking and evolutionary methods for the classification of high-dimensional DNA microarray gene expression data

Background: DNA microarray gene expression classification poses a challenging task to the machine learning domain. Typically, the dimensionality of gene expression data sets could go from several thousands to over 10,000 genes. A potential solution to this issue is using feature selection to reduce the dimensionality. Aim The aim of this paper is to investigate how we can use feature quality information to improve the precision of microarray gene expression classification tasks. Method: We propose two evolutionary machine learning models based on the eXtended Classifier System (XCS) and a typical feature selection methodology. The first one, which we call FS-XCS, uses feature selection for feature reduction purposes. The second model is GRD-XCS, which uses feature ranking to bias the rule discovery process of XCS. Results: The results indicate that the use of feature selection/ranking methods is essential for tackling high-dimensional classification tasks, such as microarray gene expression classification. However, the results also suggest that using feature ranking to bias the rule discovery process performs significantly better than using the feature reduction method. In other words, using feature quality information to develop a smarter learning procedure is more efficient than reducing the feature set. Conclusion: Our findings have shown that extracting feature quality information can assist the learning process and improve classification accuracy. On the other hand, relying exclusively on the feature quality information might potentially decrease the classification performance (e.g., using feature reduction). Therefore, we recommend a hybrid approach that uses feature quality information to direct the learning process by highlighting the more informative features, but at the same time not restricting the learning process to explore other features

Innovative Hybridisation of Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks in Detecting Marker Genes for Leukaemia Cancer

Methods for extracting marker genes that trigger the growth of cancerous cells from a high level of complexity microarrays are of much interest from the computing community. Through the identified genes, the pathology of cancerous cells can be revealed and early precaution can be taken to prevent further proliferation of cancerous cells. In this paper, we propose an innovative hybridised gene identification framework based on genetic algorithms and neural networks to identify marker genes for leukaemia disease. Our approach confirms that high classification accuracy does not ensure the optimal set of genes have been identified and our model delivers a more promising set of genes even with a lower classification accurac

Identification of disease-causing genes using microarray data mining and gene ontology

Background: One of the best and most accurate methods for identifying disease-causing genes is monitoring gene expression values in different samples using microarray technology. One of the shortcomings of microarray data is that they provide a small quantity of samples with respect to the number of genes. This problem reduces the classification accuracy of the methods, so gene selection is essential to improve the predictive accuracy and to identify potential marker genes for a disease. Among numerous existing methods for gene selection, support vector machine-based recursive feature elimination (SVMRFE) has become one of the leading methods, but its performance can be reduced because of the small sample size, noisy data and the fact that the method does not remove redundant genes. Methods: We propose a novel framework for gene selection which uses the advantageous features of conventional methods and addresses their weaknesses. In fact, we have combined the Fisher method and SVMRFE to utilize the advantages of a filtering method as well as an embedded method. Furthermore, we have added a redundancy reduction stage to address the weakness of the Fisher method and SVMRFE. In addition to gene expression values, the proposed method uses Gene Ontology which is a reliable source of information on genes. The use of Gene Ontology can compensate, in part, for the limitations of microarrays, such as having a small number of samples and erroneous measurement results. Results: The proposed method has been applied to colon, Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) and prostate cancer datasets. The empirical results show that our method has improved classification performance in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. In addition, the study of the molecular function of selected genes strengthened the hypothesis that these genes are involved in the process of cancer growth. Conclusions: The proposed method addresses the weakness of conventional methods by adding a redundancy reduction stage and utilizing Gene Ontology information. It predicts marker genes for colon, DLBCL and prostate cancer with a high accuracy. The predictions made in this study can serve as a list of candidates for subsequent wet-lab verification and might help in the search for a cure for cancers

Elephant Search with Deep Learning for Microarray Data Analysis

Even though there is a plethora of research in Microarray gene expression data analysis, still, it poses challenges for researchers to effectively and efficiently analyze the large yet complex expression of genes. The feature (gene) selection method is of paramount importance for understanding the differences in biological and non-biological variation between samples. In order to address this problem, a novel elephant search (ES) based optimization is proposed to select best gene expressions from the large volume of microarray data. Further, a promising machine learning method is envisioned to leverage such high dimensional and complex microarray dataset for extracting hidden patterns inside to make a meaningful prediction and most accurate classification. In particular, stochastic gradient descent based Deep learning (DL) with softmax activation function is then used on the reduced features (genes) for better classification of different samples according to their gene expression levels. The experiments are carried out on nine most popular Cancer microarray gene selection datasets, obtained from UCI machine learning repository. The empirical results obtained by the proposed elephant search based deep learning (ESDL) approach are compared with most recent published article for its suitability in future Bioinformatics research.Comment: 12 pages, 5 Tabl

Physico-chemical foundations underpinning microarray and next-generation sequencing experiments

Hybridization of nucleic acids on solid surfaces is a key process involved in high-throughput technologies such as microarrays and, in some cases, next-generation sequencing (NGS). A physical understanding of the hybridization process helps to determine the accuracy of these technologies. The goal of a widespread research program is to develop reliable transformations between the raw signals reported by the technologies and individual molecular concentrations from an ensemble of nucleic acids. This research has inputs from many areas, from bioinformatics and biostatistics, to theoretical and experimental biochemistry and biophysics, to computer simulations. A group of leading researchers met in Ploen Germany in 2011 to discuss present knowledge and limitations of our physico-chemical understanding of high-throughput nucleic acid technologies. This meeting inspired us to write this summary, which provides an overview of the state-of-the-art approaches based on physico-chemical foundation to modeling of the nucleic acids hybridization process on solid surfaces. In addition, practical application of current knowledge is emphasized

Inverse Projection Representation and Category Contribution Rate for Robust Tumor Recognition

Sparse representation based classification (SRC) methods have achieved remarkable results. SRC, however, still suffer from requiring enough training samples, insufficient use of test samples and instability of representation. In this paper, a stable inverse projection representation based classification (IPRC) is presented to tackle these problems by effectively using test samples. An IPR is firstly proposed and its feasibility and stability are analyzed. A classification criterion named category contribution rate is constructed to match the IPR and complete classification. Moreover, a statistical measure is introduced to quantify the stability of representation-based classification methods. Based on the IPRC technique, a robust tumor recognition framework is presented by interpreting microarray gene expression data, where a two-stage hybrid gene selection method is introduced to select informative genes. Finally, the functional analysis of candidate's pathogenicity-related genes is given. Extensive experiments on six public tumor microarray gene expression datasets demonstrate the proposed technique is competitive with state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 14 pages, 19 figures, 10 table