Web Tools for Rice Transcriptome Analyses

Gene expression databases provide profiling data for the expression of thousands of genes to researchers worldwide. Oligonucleotide microarray technology is a useful tool that has been employed to produce gene expression profiles in most species. In rice, there are five genome-wide DNA microarray platforms: NSF 45K, BGI/Yale 60K, Affymetrix, Agilent Rice 44K, and NimbleGen 390K. Presently, more than 1,700 hybridizations of microarray gene expression data are available from public microarray depositing databases such as NCBI gene expression omnibus and Arrayexpress at EBI. More processing or reformatting of public gene expression data is required for further applications or analyses. Web-based databases for expression meta-analyses are useful for guiding researchers in designing relevant research schemes. In this review, we summarize various databases for expression meta-analyses of rice genes and web tools for further applications, such as the development of co-expression network or functional gene network.     

基因表达谱芯片的数据挖掘

随着基因芯片技术的迅速发展,表达谱芯片分析及aCGH等方法已被广泛应用于生命科学各个研究领域,由此产生的数据也呈指数级增长。如何从海量数据中获取有生物学意义的结果成为摆在生物学工作者面前的难题。对表达谱芯片数据挖掘方法进行了综述。介绍了基本分析思路,当前重点分析方向,如GO分析、pathway与调控网络分析、聚类分析等计算法则和相关几款易用的分析软件。并介绍了几种科学自由计算软件在表达谱生物信息学分析中的应用。藉此为从事芯片分析的研究人员提供参考。     

Reproducibility of microarray data: a further analysis of microarray quality control (MAQC) data

Background  

Many researchers are concerned with the comparability and reliability of microarray gene expression data. Recent completion of the MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) project provides a unique opportunity to assess reproducibility across multiple sites and the comparability across multiple platforms. The MAQC analysis presented for the conclusion of inter- and intra-platform comparability/reproducibility of microarray gene expression measurements is inadequate. We evaluate the reproducibility/comparability of the MAQC data for 12901 common genes in four titration samples generated from five high-density one-color microarray platforms and the TaqMan technology. We discuss some of the problems with the use of correlation coefficient as metric to evaluate the inter- and intra-platform reproducibility and the percent of overlapping genes (POG) as a measure for evaluation of a gene selection procedure by MAQC.     

基于CART算法的肺癌微阵列数据的分类

基因芯片技术是基因组学中的重要研究工具。而基因芯片数据( 微阵列数据) 往往是高维的,使得降维成为微阵列数据分析中的一个必要步骤。本文对美国哈佛医学院 G. J. Gordon 等人提供的肺癌微阵列数据进行分析。通过 t- test,Wilcoxon 秩和检测分别提取微阵列数据特征属性,后根据 CART( Classification and Regression Tree) 算法,以 Gini 差异性指标作为误差函数,用提取的特征属性广延的构造分类树; 再进行剪枝找到最优规模的树,目的是提高树的泛化性能使得能很好适应新的预测数据。实验证明: 该方法对肺癌微阵列数据分类识别率达到 96% 以上,且很稳定; 并可以得到人们容易理解的分类规则和分类关键基因。     

乳酸菌基因芯片应用研究进展

基因芯片技术是上世纪90年代兴起的一种对成百上千甚至上万个基因同时进行检测的新技术,具有高通量、并行化的特点,广泛应用于基因表达谱测定、基因功能预测、基因突变检测和多态性分析等方面。多种乳酸菌基因组全序列以及其大量EST、16S rDNA、16S-23S基因间区和功能基因序列测定的完成,有力地推动了基因芯片技术在乳酸菌研究中的应用。介绍了基因芯片的基本原理及乳酸菌基因芯片在基因表达、种属鉴定等研究中的应用进展,以期更好地利用和开发乳酸菌基因芯片。     

Exploring the functional landscape of gene expression: directed search of large microarray compendia

MOTIVATION: The increasing availability of gene expression microarray technology has resulted in the publication of thousands of microarray gene expression datasets investigating various biological conditions. This vast repository is still underutilized due to the lack of methods for fast, accurate exploration of the entire compendium. RESULTS: We have collected Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene expression microarray data containing roughly 2400 experimental conditions. We analyzed the functional coverage of this collection and we designed a context-sensitive search algorithm for rapid exploration of the compendium. A researcher using our system provides a small set of query genes to establish a biological search context; based on this query, we weight each dataset's relevance to the context, and within these weighted datasets we identify additional genes that are co-expressed with the query set. Our method exhibits an average increase in accuracy of 273% compared to previous mega-clustering approaches when recapitulating known biology. Further, we find that our search paradigm identifies novel biological predictions that can be verified through further experimentation. Our methodology provides the ability for biological researchers to explore the totality of existing microarray data in a manner useful for drawing conclusions and formulating hypotheses, which we believe is invaluable for the research community. AVAILABILITY: Our query-driven search engine, called SPELL, is available at http://function.princeton.edu/SPELL. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Several additional data files, figures and discussions are available at http://function.princeton.edu/SPELL/supplement.     

基于不同分类模型的基因芯片癌症诊断方法研究

基因芯片技术的发展为生物信息学带来了机遇,使在基因表达水平上进行癌症诊断成为可能。但基因芯片数据高维小样本的特征也使传统机器学习方法面临挑战。本文利用真实的基因表达数据,测试了目前主要的分类方法和降维方法在癌症诊断方面的效果,通过实验对比发现：基于线性核函数的支持向量机可以有效地分类肿瘤与非肿瘤的基因表达,从而为癌症诊断提供借鉴。     

Linking the genes: inferring quantitative gene networks from microarray data

Modern microarray technology is capable of providing data about the expression of thousands of genes, and even of whole genomes. An important question is how this technology can be used most effectively to unravel the workings of cellular machinery. Here, we propose a method to infer genetic networks on the basis of data from appropriately designed microarray experiments. In addition to identifying the genes that affect a specific other gene directly, this method also estimates the strength of such effects. We will discuss both the experimental setup and the theoretical background.     

Methods for assessing reproducibility of clustering patterns observed in analyses of microarray data

MOTIVATION: Recent technological advances such as cDNA microarray technology have made it possible to simultaneously interrogate thousands of genes in a biological specimen. A cDNA microarray experiment produces a gene expression 'profile'. Often interest lies in discovering novel subgroupings, or 'clusters', of specimens based on their profiles, for example identification of new tumor taxonomies. Cluster analysis techniques such as hierarchical clustering and self-organizing maps have frequently been used for investigating structure in microarray data. However, clustering algorithms always detect clusters, even on random data, and it is easy to misinterpret the results without some objective measure of the reproducibility of the clusters. RESULTS: We present statistical methods for testing for overall clustering of gene expression profiles, and we define easily interpretable measures of cluster-specific reproducibility that facilitate understanding of the clustering structure. We apply these methods to elucidate structure in cDNA microarray gene expression profiles obtained on melanoma tumors and on prostate specimens.     

Connectivity Mapping for Candidate Therapeutics Identification Using Next Generation Sequencing RNA-Seq Data

The advent of next generation sequencing technologies (NGS) has expanded the area of genomic research, offering high coverage and increased sensitivity over older microarray platforms. Although the current cost of next generation sequencing is still exceeding that of microarray approaches, the rapid advances in NGS will likely make it the platform of choice for future research in differential gene expression. Connectivity mapping is a procedure for examining the connections among diseases, genes and drugs by differential gene expression initially based on microarray technology, with which a large collection of compound-induced reference gene expression profiles have been accumulated. In this work, we aim to test the feasibility of incorporating NGS RNA-Seq data into the current connectivity mapping framework by utilizing the microarray based reference profiles and the construction of a differentially expressed gene signature from a NGS dataset. This would allow for the establishment of connections between the NGS gene signature and those microarray reference profiles, alleviating the associated incurring cost of re-creating drug profiles with NGS technology. We examined the connectivity mapping approach on a publicly available NGS dataset with androgen stimulation of LNCaP cells in order to extract candidate compounds that could inhibit the proliferative phenotype of LNCaP cells and to elucidate their potential in a laboratory setting. In addition, we also analyzed an independent microarray dataset of similar experimental settings. We found a high level of concordance between the top compounds identified using the gene signatures from the two datasets. The nicotine derivative cotinine was returned as the top candidate among the overlapping compounds with potential to suppress this proliferative phenotype. Subsequent lab experiments validated this connectivity mapping hit, showing that cotinine inhibits cell proliferation in an androgen dependent manner. Thus the results in this study suggest a promising prospect of integrating NGS data with connectivity mapping.     

The application of DNA microarrays in gene expression analysis

DNA microarray technology is a new and powerful technology that will substantially increase the speed of molecular biological research. This paper gives a survey of DNA microarray technology and its use in gene expression studies. The technical aspects and their potential improvements are discussed. These comprise array manufacturing and design, array hybridisation, scanning, and data handling. Furthermore, it is discussed how DNA microarrays can be applied in the working fields of: safety, functionality and health of food and gene discovery and pathway engineering in plants.     

Genomic Portraits of the Nervous System in Health and Disease

As the human genome project moves toward its goal of sequencing the entire human genome, gene expression profiling by DNA microarray technology is being employed to rapidly screen genes for biological information. In this review, we will introduce DNA microarray technology, outline the basic experimental paradigms and data analysis methods, and then show with some examples how gene expression profiling can be applied to the study of the central nervous system in health and disease.     

In silico gene selection strategy for custom microarray design

Microarray technology has become an important tool for studying large-scale gene expression for a diversity of biological applications. However, there are a number of experimental settings for which commercial arrays are either unsuitable or unavailable despite the existence of sequence information. With the increasing availability of custom array manufacturing services, it is now feasible to design high-density arrays for any organism having sequence data. However, there have been relatively few reports discussing gene selection, an important first step in array design. Here we propose an in silico strategy for custom microarray gene selection that is applicable to a wide range of organisms, based on utilizing public domain microarray information to interrogate existing sequence data and to identify a set of homologous genes in any organism of interest. We demonstrate the utility of this approach by applying it to the selection of candidate genes for a custom Xenopus laevis microarray. A significant finding of this study is that 3%-4% of Xenopus expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are in an orientation contrary to that indicated in the public database entry (http://mssaha.people.wm.edu/suppMSS.html).     

Gene expression microarrays and the integration of biological knowledge

Large-scale parallel measurement of whole-genome RNA expression is now possible with high-density arrays of cDNA or oligonucleotides. Using this technology efficiently will require the integration of other sources of biological information, such as gene identity, biomedical literature and biochemical pathway for a given gene. Such integration is essential to understand the cellular program of gene expression and the molecular physiology of an organism. Advances in microarray technology, and the expected rapid rise in microarray data will lead to new insight into fundamental biological problems such as the prediction of gene function from expression profiles and the identification of potential drug targets from biologically active compounds.     

肿瘤微阵列数据统计分析概述

微阵列技术已广泛应用于生物学和医学研究领域,如肿瘤的诊断和分型、预测和治疗,理解肿瘤的发生机制、生物学通路和基因网络。统计学方法在这一科学挑战中的地位至关重要。我们综述了微阵列实验数据分析的统计学方法最新发展,主要描述了微阵列数据的标准化、差异表达基因的统计学检验及微阵列技术在肿瘤治疗中的应用,重点介绍了时间序列微阵列数据分析方法和基因调控网络在肿瘤研究中的最新发展。