18834097
Utilization of two sample t-test statistics from redundant probe sets to evaluate different probe set algorithms in GeneChip studies
BackgroundThe choice of probe set algorithms for expression summary in a GeneChip study has a great impact on subsequent gene expression data analysis. Spiked-in cRNAs with known concentration are often used to assess the relative performance of probe set algorithms. Given the fact that the spiked-in cRNAs do not represent endogenously expressed genes in experiments, it becomes increasingly important to have methods to study whether a particular probe set algorithm is more appropriate for a specific dataset, without using such external reference data.ResultsWe propose the use of the probe set redundancy feature for evaluating the performance of probe set algorithms, and have presented three approaches for analyzing data variance and result bias using two sample t-test statistics from redundant probe sets. These approaches are as follows: 1) analyzing redundant probe set variance based on t-statistic rank order, 2) computing correlation of t-statistics between redundant probe sets, and 3) analyzing the co-occurrence of replicate redundant probe sets representing differentially expressed genes. We applied these approaches to expression summary data generated from three datasets utilizing individual probe set algorithms of MAS5.0, dChip, or RMA. We also utilized combinations of options from the three probe set algorithms. We found that results from the three approaches were similar within each individual expression summary dataset, and were also in good agreement with previously reported findings by others. We also demonstrate the validity of our findings by independent experimental methods.ConclusionAll three proposed approaches allowed us to assess the performance of probe set algorithms using the probe set redundancy feature. The analyses of redundant probe set variance based on t-statistic rank order and correlation of t-statistics between redundant probe sets provide useful tools for data variance analysis, and the co-occurrence of replicate redundant probe sets representing differentially expressed genes allows estimation of result bias. The results also suggest that individual probe set algorithms have dataset-specific performance.
190172
REDfly: a Regulatory Element Database for Drosophila
Bioinformatics studies of transcriptional regulation in the metazoa are significantly hindered by the absence of readily available data on large numbers of transcriptional cis-regulatory modules (CRMs). Even the richly annotated Drosophila melanogaster genome lacks extensive CRM information. We therefore present here a database of Drosophila CRMs curated from the literature complete with both DNA sequence and a searchable description of the gene expression pattern regulated by each CRM. This resource should greatly facilitate the development of computational approaches to CRM discovery as well as bioinformatics analyses of regulatory sequence properties and evolution.
10305231
The Protein Information Resource: an integrated public resource of functional annotation of proteins
The Protein Information Resource (PIR) serves as an integrated public resource of functional annotation of protein data to support genomic/proteomic research and scientific discovery. The PIR, in collaboration with the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS) and the Japan International Protein Information Database (JIPID), produces the PIR-International Protein Sequence Database (PSD), the major annotated protein sequence database in the public domain, containing about 250 000 proteins. To improve protein annotation and the coverage of experimentally validated data, a bibliography submission system is developed for scientists to submit, categorize and retrieve literature information. Comprehensive protein information is available from iProClass, which includes family classification at the superfamily, domain and motif levels, structural and functional features of proteins, as well as cross-references to over 40 biological databases. To provide timely and comprehensive protein data with source attribution, we have introduced a non-redundant reference protein database, PIR-NREF. The database consists of about 800 000 proteins collected from PIR-PSD, SWISS-PROT, TrEMBL, GenPept, RefSeq and PDB, with composite protein names and literature data. To promote database interoperability, we provide XML data distribution and open database schema, and adopt common ontologies. The PIR web site (http://pir.georgetown.edu/) features data mining and sequence analysis tools for information retrieval and functional identification of proteins based on both sequence and annotation information. The PIR databases and other files are also available by FTP (ftp://nbrfa.georgetown.edu/pir_databases).
1850262
A Compositional Framework for Mining Longest Ranges
This paper proposes a compositional framework for discovering interesting range information from huge databases, where a domain specific query language is provided to specify the range of interest, and a general algorithm is given to mine the range specified in this language efficiently. A wide class of longest range problems, including the intensively studied optimized support range problem [FMMT96], can be solved systematically in this framework. Experiments with real world databases show that our framework is efficient not only in theory but also in practice.
17460651
A calculational fusion system HYLO
Fusion, one of the most useful transformation tactics for deriving efficient programs, is the process whereby separate pieces of programs are fused into a single one, leading to an efficient program without intermediate data structures produced. In this paper, we report our on-going investigation on the design and implementation of an automatic transformation system HYLO which performs fusion transformation in a more systematic and more general way than any other systems. The distinguished point of our system is its calculational feature based on simple application of transformation laws rather than traditional search-based transformations.
53305921
Substring selection for biomedical document classification
Motivation: Attribute selection is a critical step in development of document classification systems. As a standard practice, words are stemmed and the most informative ones are used as attributes in classification. Owing to high complexity of biomedical terminology, general-purpose stemming algorithms are often conservative and could also remove informative stems. This can lead to accuracy reduction, especially when the number of labeled documents is small. To address this issue, we propose an algorithm that omits stemming and, instead, uses the most discriminative substrings as attributes. 
 
Results: The approach was tested on five annotated sets of abstracts from iProLINK that report on the experimental evidence about five types of protein post-translational modifications. The experiments showed that Naive Bayes and support vector machine classifiers perform consistently better [with area under the ROC curve (AUC) accuracy in range 0.92--0.97] when using the proposed attribute selection than when using attributes obtained by the Porter stemmer algorithm (AUC in 0.86--0.93 range). The proposed approach is particularly useful when labeled datasets are small. 
 
Contact: vucetic@ist.temple.edu 
 
Supplementary Information: The supplementary data are available from www.ist.temple.edu/PIRsupplement
12853199
Parallelization with Tree Skeletons
Trees are useful data structures, but to design efficient parallel programs over trees is known to be more difficult than to do over lists. Although several important tree skeletons have been proposed to simplify parallel programming on trees, few studies have been reported on how to systematically use them in solving practical problems; it is neither clear how to make a good combination of skeletons to solve a given problem, nor obvious even how to find suitable operators used in a single skeleton. In this paper, we report our first attempt to resolve these problems, proposing two important transformations, the tree diffusion transformation and the tree context preservation transformation. The tree diffusion transformation allows one to use familiar recursive definitions to develop his parallel programs, while the tree context preservation transformation shows how to derive associative operators that are required when using tree skeletons. We illustrate our approach by deriving an efficient parallel program for solving a nontrivial problem called the party planning problem, the tree version of the famous maximum-weight-sum problem.