Epistasis Blog

From the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Lab at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (www.epistasis.org)

Saturday, October 17, 2015

An Independent Filter for Gene Set Testing Based on Spectral Enrichment

Our new paper on gene set enrichment analysis.

Frost HR, Li Z, Asselbergs FW, Moore JH. An Independent Filter for Gene Set Testing Based on Spectral Enrichment. IEEE/ACM Trans Comput Biol Bioinform. 2015 Sep-Oct;12(5):1076-86. [PubMed] [IEEE]

Abstract

Gene set testing has become an indispensable tool for the analysis of high-dimensional genomic data. An important motivation for testing gene sets, rather than individual genomic variables, is to improve statistical power by reducing the number of tested hypotheses. Given the dramatic growth in common gene set collections, however, testing is often performed with nearly as many gene sets as underlying genomic variables. To address the challenge to statistical power posed by large gene set collections, we have developed spectral gene set filtering (SGSF), a novel technique for independent filtering of gene set collections prior to gene set testing. The SGSF method uses as a filter statistic the p-value measuring the statistical significance of the association between each gene set and the sample principal components (PCs), taking into account the significance of the associated eigenvalues. Because this filter statistic is independent of standard gene set test statistics under the null hypothesis but dependent under the alternative, the proportion of enriched gene sets is increased without impacting the type I error rate. As shown using simulated and real gene expression data, the SGSF algorithm accurately filters gene sets unrelated to the experimental outcome resulting in significantly
increased gene set testing power.

Sunday, October 04, 2015

ExSTraCS 2.0: Description and Evaluation of a Scalable Learning Classifier System

Our latest paper on the development, evaluation, and application of learning classifier systems (LCS) to the detection and characterization of genetic effects that are heterogeneous. This work has been lead by my former graduate student and postdoc Dr. Ryan Urbanowicz. See his web page for more information.

Urbanowicz RJ, Moore JH. ExSTraCS 2.0: Description and Evaluation of a Scalable Learning Classifier System. Evol Intell. 2015 Sep;8(2):89-116. [PubMed] [Springer]


Abstract


Algorithmic scalability is a major concern for any machine learning strategy in this age of 'big data'. A large number of potentially predictive attributes is emblematic of problems in bioinformatics, genetic epidemiology, and many other fields. Previously, ExS-TraCS was introduced as an extended Michigan-style supervised learning classifier system that combined a set of powerful heuristics to successfully tackle the challenges of classification, prediction, and knowledge discovery in complex, noisy, and heterogeneous problem domains. While Michigan-style learning classifier systems are powerful and flexible learners, they are not considered to be particularly scalable. For the first time, this paper presents a complete description of the ExS-TraCS algorithm and introduces an effective strategy to dramatically improve learning classifier system scalability. ExSTraCS 2.0 addresses scalability with (1) a rule specificity limit, (2) new approaches to expert knowledge guided covering and mutation mechanisms, and (3) the implementation and utilization of the TuRF algorithm for improving the quality of expert knowledge discovery in larger datasets. Performance over a complex spectrum of simulated genetic datasets demonstrated that these new mechanisms dramatically improve nearly every performance metric on datasets with 20 attributes and made it possible for ExSTraCS to reliably scale up to perform on related 200 and 2000-attribute datasets. ExSTraCS 2.0 was also able to reliably solve the 6, 11, 20, 37, 70, and 135 multiplexer problems, and did so in similar or fewer learning iterations than previously reported, with smaller finite training sets, and without using building blocks discovered from simpler multiplexer problems. Furthermore, ExS-TraCS usability was made simpler through the elimination of previously critical run parameters.