Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.

Gene set methods aim to assess the overall evidence of association of a set of genes with a phenotype, such as disease or a quantitative trait. Multiple approaches for gene set analysis of expression data have been proposed. They can be divided into two types: competitive and self-contained. Benefit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Brooke L Fridley, Gregory D Jenkins, Joanna M Biernacka
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2010-09-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012693&type=printable
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849695044390354944
author Brooke L Fridley
Gregory D Jenkins
Joanna M Biernacka
author_facet Brooke L Fridley
Gregory D Jenkins
Joanna M Biernacka
author_sort Brooke L Fridley
collection DOAJ
description Gene set methods aim to assess the overall evidence of association of a set of genes with a phenotype, such as disease or a quantitative trait. Multiple approaches for gene set analysis of expression data have been proposed. They can be divided into two types: competitive and self-contained. Benefits of self-contained methods include that they can be used for genome-wide, candidate gene, or pathway studies, and have been reported to be more powerful than competitive methods. We therefore investigated ten self-contained methods that can be used for continuous, discrete and time-to-event phenotypes. To assess the power and type I error rate for the various previously proposed and novel approaches, an extensive simulation study was completed in which the scenarios varied according to: number of genes in a gene set, number of genes associated with the phenotype, effect sizes, correlation between expression of genes within a gene set, and the sample size. In addition to the simulated data, the various methods were applied to a pharmacogenomic study of the drug gemcitabine. Simulation results demonstrated that overall Fisher's method and the global model with random effects have the highest power for a wide range of scenarios, while the analysis based on the first principal component and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test tended to have lowest power. The methods investigated here are likely to play an important role in identifying pathways that contribute to complex traits.
format Article
id doaj-art-116d20bef5684f2b92362fa882ff4fbb
institution DOAJ
issn 1932-6203
language English
publishDate 2010-09-01
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
record_format Article
series PLoS ONE
spelling doaj-art-116d20bef5684f2b92362fa882ff4fbb2025-08-20T03:19:53ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032010-09-0159e1269310.1371/journal.pone.0012693Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.Brooke L FridleyGregory D JenkinsJoanna M BiernackaGene set methods aim to assess the overall evidence of association of a set of genes with a phenotype, such as disease or a quantitative trait. Multiple approaches for gene set analysis of expression data have been proposed. They can be divided into two types: competitive and self-contained. Benefits of self-contained methods include that they can be used for genome-wide, candidate gene, or pathway studies, and have been reported to be more powerful than competitive methods. We therefore investigated ten self-contained methods that can be used for continuous, discrete and time-to-event phenotypes. To assess the power and type I error rate for the various previously proposed and novel approaches, an extensive simulation study was completed in which the scenarios varied according to: number of genes in a gene set, number of genes associated with the phenotype, effect sizes, correlation between expression of genes within a gene set, and the sample size. In addition to the simulated data, the various methods were applied to a pharmacogenomic study of the drug gemcitabine. Simulation results demonstrated that overall Fisher's method and the global model with random effects have the highest power for a wide range of scenarios, while the analysis based on the first principal component and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test tended to have lowest power. The methods investigated here are likely to play an important role in identifying pathways that contribute to complex traits.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012693&type=printable
spellingShingle Brooke L Fridley
Gregory D Jenkins
Joanna M Biernacka
Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.
PLoS ONE
title Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.
title_full Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.
title_fullStr Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.
title_full_unstemmed Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.
title_short Self-contained gene-set analysis of expression data: an evaluation of existing and novel methods.
title_sort self contained gene set analysis of expression data an evaluation of existing and novel methods
url https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012693&type=printable
work_keys_str_mv AT brookelfridley selfcontainedgenesetanalysisofexpressiondataanevaluationofexistingandnovelmethods
AT gregorydjenkins selfcontainedgenesetanalysisofexpressiondataanevaluationofexistingandnovelmethods
AT joannambiernacka selfcontainedgenesetanalysisofexpressiondataanevaluationofexistingandnovelmethods