Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Minimum Description Length Measures Of Evidence For Enrichment, Zhenyu Yang, David R. Bickel

COBRA Preprint Series

In order to functionally interpret differentially expressed genes or other discovered features, researchers seek to detect enrichment in the form of overrepresentation of discovered features associated with a biological process. Most enrichment methods treat the p-value as the measure of evidence using a statistical test such as the binomial test, Fisher's exact test or the hypergeometric test. However, the p-value is not interpretable as a measure of evidence apart from adjustments in light of the sample size. As a measure of evidence supporting one hypothesis over the other, the Bayes factor (BF) overcomes this drawback of the p-value but lacks …

A Bayesian Shared Component Model For Genetic Association Studies, Juan J. Abellan, Carlos Abellan, Juan R. Gonzalez

COBRA Preprint Series

We present a novel approach to address genome association studies between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and disease. We propose a Bayesian shared component model to tease out the genotype information that is common to cases and controls from the one that is specific to cases only. This allows to detect the SNPs that show the strongest association with the disease. The model can be applied to case-control studies with more than one disease. In fact, we illustrate the use of this model with a dataset of 23,418 SNPs from a case-control study by The Welcome Trust Case Control Consortium (2007) …

Minimum Description Length And Empirical Bayes Methods Of Identifying Snps Associated With Disease, Ye Yang, David R. Bickel

COBRA Preprint Series

The goal of determining which of hundreds of thousands of SNPs are associated with disease poses one of the most challenging multiple testing problems. Using the empirical Bayes approach, the local false discovery rate (LFDR) estimated using popular semiparametric models has enjoyed success in simultaneous inference. However, the estimated LFDR can be biased because the semiparametric approach tends to overestimate the proportion of the non-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). One of the negative consequences is that, like conventional p-values, such LFDR estimates cannot quantify the amount of information in the data that favors the null hypothesis of no disease-association.

We …

New Statistical Paradigms Leading To Web-Based Tools For Clinical/Translational Science, Knut M. Wittkowski

COBRA Preprint Series

As the field of functional genetics and genomics is beginning to mature, we become confronted with new challenges. The constant drop in price for sequencing and gene expression profiling as well as the increasing number of genetic and genomic variables that can be measured makes it feasible to address more complex questions. The success with rare diseases caused by single loci or genes has provided us with a proof-of-concept that new therapies can be developed based on functional genomics and genetics.

Common diseases, however, typically involve genetic epistasis, genomic pathways, and proteomic pattern. Moreover, to better understand the underlying biologi-cal …