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Evaluating coexpression analysis for gene function prediction Lotay, Vaneet Singh

Abstract

Microarray expression data sets vary in size, data quality and other features, but most methods for selecting coexpressed gene pairs use a ‘one size fits all’ approach. There have been many different procedures for selecting coexpressed gene pairs of high functional similarity from an expression dataset. However, it is not clear which procedure performs best as there are few studies reporting comparisons of these approaches. The goal of this thesis is to develop a set of “best practices” in order to select coexpression links of high functional similarity from an expression dataset, along which methods for identifying datasets likely to yield poor information. With these goals, we hope to improve the quality of gene function predictions produced by coexpression analysis. Using 80 human expression datasets we examined the impact of different thresholds, correlation metrics, expression data filtering and transformation procedures on performance in functional prediction. We also investigated the relationship between data quality and other features of expression datasets and their performance in functional prediction. We used the annotations of the Gene Ontology as a primary metric to measure similarity in gene function, and employ additional functional metrics for validation. Our results show that several dataset features have a greater influence on the performance in functional prediction than others. Expression datasets which produce coexpressed gene pairs of poor functional quality can be identified by a similar set of data features. Some procedures used in coexpression analysis have a negligible effect on the quality of functional predictions while others are essential to achieving the best performance in the algorithm. We also find that some procedures interact greatly with features of expression datasets and that these interactions increase the number of high quality coexpressed gene pairs retrieved through coexpression analysis. This thesis uncovers important information on the many intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence the performance in functional prediction of coexpression analysis. The information summarized here will help guide future studies using coexpression analysis and improve the quality of gene function predictions.

Item Metadata

Title
Evaluating coexpression analysis for gene function prediction
Creator
Lotay, Vaneet Singh
Publisher
University of British Columbia
Date Issued
2009
Description
Microarray expression data sets vary in size, data quality and other features, but most methods for selecting coexpressed gene pairs use a ‘one size fits all’ approach. There have been many different procedures for selecting coexpressed gene pairs of high functional similarity from an expression dataset. However, it is not clear which procedure performs best as there are few studies reporting comparisons of these approaches. The goal of this thesis is to develop a set of “best practices” in order to select coexpression links of high functional similarity from an expression dataset, along which methods for identifying datasets likely to yield poor information. With these goals, we hope to improve the quality of gene function predictions produced by coexpression analysis. Using 80 human expression datasets we examined the impact of different thresholds, correlation metrics, expression data filtering and transformation procedures on performance in functional prediction. We also investigated the relationship between data quality and other features of expression datasets and their performance in functional prediction. We used the annotations of the Gene Ontology as a primary metric to measure similarity in gene function, and employ additional functional metrics for validation. Our results show that several dataset features have a greater influence on the performance in functional prediction than others. Expression datasets which produce coexpressed gene pairs of poor functional quality can be identified by a similar set of data features. Some procedures used in coexpression analysis have a negligible effect on the quality of functional predictions while others are essential to achieving the best performance in the algorithm. We also find that some procedures interact greatly with features of expression datasets and that these interactions increase the number of high quality coexpressed gene pairs retrieved through coexpression analysis. This thesis uncovers important information on the many intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence the performance in functional prediction of coexpression analysis. The information summarized here will help guide future studies using coexpression analysis and improve the quality of gene function predictions.
Genre
Thesis/Dissertation
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2010-01-04
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution 3.0 Unported
DOI
10.14288/1.0068712
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/17430
Degree
Master of Science - MSc
Program
Bioinformatics
Affiliation
Science, Faculty of
Degree Grantor
University of British Columbia
Graduation Date
2010-05
Campus
UBCV
Scholarly Level
Graduate
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Attribution 3.0 Unported