Background: The accurate detection of differentially expressed (DE) genes has become a central task in microarray analysis. Unfortunately, the noise level and experimental variability of microarrays can be limiting. While a number of existing methods partially overcome these limitations by incorporating biological knowledge in the form of gene groups, these methods sacrifice gene-level resolution. This loss of precision can be inappropriate, especially if the desired output is a ranked list of individual genes. To address this shortcoming, we developed M-BISON (Microarray-Based Integration of data SOurces using Networks), a formal probabilistic model that integrates background biological knowledge with microarray data to predict individual DE genes. Results: M-BISON improves signal detection on a range of simulated data, particularly when using very noisy microarray data. We also applied the method to the task of predicting heat shockrelated differentially expressed genes in S. cerevi...
Bernie J. Daigle Jr., Russ B. Altman