Towards a Holistic, Yet Gene-Centered Analysis of Gene Expression Profiles: A Case Study of Human Lung Cancers

Date
2006-11-2
Authors
Guo, Yuchun
Eichler, Gabriel S.
Feng, Ying
Ingber, Donald E.
Huang, Sui
Version
OA Version
Citation
Guo, Yuchun, Gabriel S. Eichler, Ying Feng, Donald E. Ingber, Sui Huang. "Towards a Holistic, Yet Gene-Centered Analysis of Gene Expression Profiles: A Case Study of Human Lung Cancers" Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology 2006:69141.
Abstract
Genome-wide gene expression profile studies encompass increasingly large number of samples, posing a challenge to their presentation and interpretation without losing the notion that each transcriptome constitutes a complex biological entity. Much like pathologists who visually analyze information-rich histological sections as a whole, we propose here an integrative approach. We use a self-organizing maps -based software, the gene expression dynamics inspector (GEDI) to analyze gene expression profiles of various lung tumors. GEDI allows the comparison of tumor profiles based on direct visual detection of transcriptome patterns. Such intuitive "gestalt" perception promotes the discovery of interesting relationships in the absence of an existing hypothesis. We uncovered qualitative relationships between squamous cell tumors, small-cell tumors, and carcinoid tumor that would have escaped existing algorithmic classifications. These results suggest that GEDI may be a valuable explorative tool that combines global and gene-centered analyses of molecular profiles from large-scale microarray experiments.
Description
License
Copyright 2006 Yuchun Guo et al.