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At least 1,153 records · Page 64Linked to original sources

Disulfide connectivity prediction using recursive neural networks and evolutionary information.

MOTIVATION: We focus on the prediction of disulfide bridges in proteins starting from their amino acid sequence and from the knowledge of the disulfide bonding state of each cysteine. The location of disulfide bridges is a structural feature that conveys important information about the protein main chain conformation and can therefore help towards the solution of the folding problem. Existing approaches based on weighted graph matching algorithms do not take advantage of evolutionary information. Recursive neural networks (RNN), on the other hand, can handle in a natural way complex data structures such as graphs whose vertices are labeled by real vectors, allowing us to incorporate multiple alignment profiles in the graphical representation of disulfide connectivity patterns. RESULTS: The core of the method is the use of machine learning tools to rank alternative disulfide connectivity patterns. We develop an ad-hoc RNN architecture for scoring labeled undirected graphs that represent connectivity patterns. In order to compare our algorithm with previous methods, we report experimental results on the SWISS-PROT 39 dataset. We find that using multiple alignment profiles allows us to obtain significant prediction accuracy improvements, clearly demonstrating the important role played by evolutionary information. AVAILABILITY: The Web interface of the predictor is available at http://neural.dsi.unifi.it/cysteines

Algorithms↗

ESPD: a pattern detection model underlying gene expression profiles.

MOTIVATION: DNA arrays permit rapid, large-scale screening for patterns of gene expression and simultaneously yield the expression levels of thousands of genes for samples. The number of samples is usually limited, and such datasets are very sparse in high-dimensional gene space. Furthermore, most of the genes collected may not necessarily be of interest and uncertainty about which genes are relevant makes it difficult to construct an informative gene space. Unsupervised empirical sample pattern discovery and informative genes identification of such sparse high-dimensional datasets present interesting but challenging problems. RESULTS: A new model called empirical sample pattern detection (ESPD) is proposed to delineate pattern quality with informative genes. By integrating statistical metrics, data mining and machine learning techniques, this model dynamically measures and manipulates the relationship between samples and genes while conducting an iterative detection of informative space and the empirical pattern. The performance of the proposed method with various array datasets is illustrated.

Algorithms↗

SCA db: spinocerebellar ataxia candidate gene database.

UNLABELLED: The positional candidate gene approach accelerates the discovery of genes involved in disease. However, the properties of such disease genes are very diverse and the sample size of known disease genes is too small and does not warrant success by the use of a machine-learning approach. A user-defined scoring system may thus help to determine the priority of candidate genes. Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) is a good model to test this approach because most SCA subtypes are caused by an expansion of short tandem repeats (STRs). The SCA db is a candidate gene database for SCA, which collected 3185 genes for 17 types of SCA. Those SCA subtypes that have known disease genes can be used as positive controls to optimize the parameters. The users may browse the candidate genes of a given SCA subtype by using the default parameters. The known disease genes were found to be the top three candidates using the default parameters. Alternatively, the users may score the candidate genes by changing the weight or the scores on the basis of their own working hypothesis. AVAILABILITY: This database is available at http://ymbc.ym.edu.tw/sca/

Database Management Systems↗

An entity tagger for recognizing acquired genomic variations in cancer literature.

VTag is an application for identifying the type, genomic location and genomic state-change of acquired genomic aberrations described in text. The application uses a machine learning technique called conditional random fields. VTag was tested with 345 training and 200 evaluation documents pertaining to cancer genetics. Our experiments resulted in 0.8541 precision, 0.7870 recall and 0.8192 F-measure on the evaluation set.

Abstracting and Indexing↗

A web portal for classification of expression data using maximal margin linear programming.

The Maximal Margin (MAMA) linear programming classification algorithm has recently been proposed and tested for cancer classification based on expression data. It demonstrated sound performance on publicly available expression datasets. We developed a web interface to allow potential users easy access to the MAMA classification tool. Basic and advanced options provide flexibility in exploitation. The input data format is the same as that used in most publicly available datasets. This makes the web resource particularly convenient for non-expert machine learning users working in the field of expression data analysis.

Algorithms↗

Conserved network motifs allow protein-protein interaction prediction.

MOTIVATION: High-throughput protein interaction detection methods are strongly affected by false positive and false negative results. Focused experiments are needed to complement the large-scale methods by validating previously detected interactions but it is often difficult to decide which proteins to probe as interaction partners. Developing reliable computational methods assisting this decision process is a pressing need in bioinformatics. RESULTS: We show that we can use the conserved properties of the protein network to identify and validate interaction candidates. We apply a number of machine learning algorithms to the protein connectivity information and achieve a surprisingly good overall performance in predicting interacting proteins. Using a 'leave-one-out' approach we find average success rates between 20 and 40% for predicting the correct interaction partner of a protein. We demonstrate that the success of these methods is based on the presence of conserved interaction motifs within the network. AVAILABILITY: A reference implementation and a table with candidate interacting partners for each yeast protein are available at http://www.protsuggest.org.

Algorithms↗

Gene name ambiguity of eukaryotic nomenclatures.

MOTIVATION: With more and more scientific literature published online, the effective management and reuse of this knowledge has become problematic. Natural language processing (NLP) may be a potential solution by extracting, structuring and organizing biomedical information in online literature in a timely manner. One essential task is to recognize and identify genomic entities in text. 'Recognition' can be accomplished using pattern matching and machine learning. But for 'identification' these techniques are not adequate. In order to identify genomic entities, NLP needs a comprehensive resource that specifies and classifies genomic entities as they occur in text and that associates them with normalized terms and also unique identifiers so that the extracted entities are well defined. Online organism databases are an excellent resource to create such a lexical resource. However, gene name ambiguity is a serious problem because it affects the appropriate identification of gene entities. In this paper, we explore the extent of the problem and suggest ways to address it. RESULTS: We obtained gene information from 21 organisms and quantified naming ambiguities within species, across species, with English words and with medical terms. When the case (of letters) was retained, official symbols displayed negligible intra-species ambiguity (0.02%) and modest ambiguities with general English words (0.57%) and medical terms (1.01%). In contrast, the across-species ambiguity was high (14.20%). The inclusion of gene synonyms increased intra-species ambiguity substantially and full names contributed greatly to gene-medical-term ambiguity. A comprehensive lexical resource that covers gene information for the 21 organisms was then created and used to identify gene names by using a straightforward string matching program to process 45,000 abstracts associated with the mouse model organism while ignoring case and gene names that were also English words. We found that 85.1% of correctly retrieved mouse genes were ambiguous with other gene names. When gene names that were also English words were included, 233% additional 'gene' instances were retrieved, most of which were false positives. We also found that authors prefer to use synonyms (74.7%) to official symbols (17.7%) or full names (7.6%) in their publications. CONTACT: lifeng.chen@dbmi.columbia.edu

Abstracting and Indexing↗

A neural-network-based method for predicting protein stability changes upon single point mutations.

MOTIVATION: One important requirement for protein design is to be able to predict changes of protein stability upon mutation. Different methods addressing this task have been described and their performance tested considering global linear correlation between predicted and experimental data. Neither is direct statistical evaluation of their prediction performance available, nor is a direct comparison among different approaches possible. Recently, a significant database of thermodynamic data on protein stability changes upon single point mutation has been generated (ProTherm). This allows the application of machine learning techniques to predicting free energy stability changes upon mutation starting from the protein sequence. RESULTS: In this paper, we present a neural-network-based method to predict if a given mutation increases or decreases the protein thermodynamic stability with respect to the native structure. Using a dataset consisting of 1615 mutations, our predictor correctly classifies >80% of the mutations in the database. On the same task and using the same data, our predictor performs better than other methods available on the Web. Moreover, when our system is coupled with energy-based methods, the joint prediction accuracy increases up to 90%, suggesting that it can be used to increase also the performance of pre-existing methods, and generally to improve protein design strategies. AVAILABILITY: The server is under construction and will be available at http://www.biocomp.unibo.it

Algorithms↗

A comprehensive evaluation of multicategory classification methods for microarray gene expression cancer diagnosis.

MOTIVATION: Cancer diagnosis is one of the most important emerging clinical applications of gene expression microarray technology. We are seeking to develop a computer system for powerful and reliable cancer diagnostic model creation based on microarray data. To keep a realistic perspective on clinical applications we focus on multicategory diagnosis. To equip the system with the optimum combination of classifier, gene selection and cross-validation methods, we performed a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of several major algorithms for multicategory classification, several gene selection methods, multiple ensemble classifier methods and two cross-validation designs using 11 datasets spanning 74 diagnostic categories and 41 cancer types and 12 normal tissue types. RESULTS: Multicategory support vector machines (MC-SVMs) are the most effective classifiers in performing accurate cancer diagnosis from gene expression data. The MC-SVM techniques by Crammer and Singer, Weston and Watkins and one-versus-rest were found to be the best methods in this domain. MC-SVMs outperform other popular machine learning algorithms, such as k-nearest neighbors, backpropagation and probabilistic neural networks, often to a remarkable degree. Gene selection techniques can significantly improve the classification performance of both MC-SVMs and other non-SVM learning algorithms. Ensemble classifiers do not generally improve performance of the best non-ensemble models. These results guided the construction of a software system GEMS (Gene Expression Model Selector) that automates high-quality model construction and enforces sound optimization and performance estimation procedures. This is the first such system to be informed by a rigorous comparative analysis of the available algorithms and datasets. AVAILABILITY: The software system GEMS is available for download from http://www.gems-system.org for non-commercial use. CONTACT: alexander.statnikov@vanderbilt.edu.

Algorithms↗

Bayesian neural network approaches to ovarian cancer identification from high-resolution mass spectrometry data.

MOTIVATION: The classification of high-dimensional data is always a challenge to statistical machine learning. We propose a novel method named shallow feature selection that assigns each feature a probability of being selected based on the structure of training data itself. Independent of particular classifiers, the high dimension of biodata can be fleetly reduced to an applicable case for consequential processing. Moreover, to improve both efficiency and performance of classification, these prior probabilities are further used to specify the distributions of top-level hyperparameters in hierarchical models of Bayesian neural network (BNN), as well as the parameters in Gaussian process models. RESULTS: Three BNN approaches were derived and then applied to identify ovarian cancer from NCI's high-resolution mass spectrometry data, which yielded an excellent performance in 1000 independent k-fold cross validations (k = 2,...,10). For instance, indices of average sensitivity and specificity of 98.56 and 98.42%, respectively, were achieved in the 2-fold cross validations. Furthermore, only one control and one cancer were misclassified in the leave-one-out cross validation. Some other popular classifiers were also tested for comparison. AVAILABILITY: The programs implemented in MatLab, R and Neal's fbm.2004-11-10.

Bayes Theorem↗

Computational discovery of transcriptional regulatory rules.

MOTIVATION: Even in a simple organism like yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, transcription is an extremely complex process. The expression of sets of genes can be turned on or off by the binding of specific transcription factors to the promoter regions of genes. Experimental and computational approaches have been proposed to establish mappings of DNA-binding locations of transcription factors. However, although location data obtained from experimental methods are noisy owing to imperfections in the measuring methods, computational approaches suffer from over-prediction problems owing to the short length of the sequence motifs bound by the transcription factors. Also, these interactions are usually environment-dependent: many regulators only bind to the promoter region of genes under specific environmental conditions. Even more, the presence of regulators at a promoter region indicates binding but not necessarily function: the regulator may act positively, negatively or not act at all. Therefore, identifying true and functional interactions between transcription factors and genes in specific environment conditions and describing the relationship between them are still open problems. RESULTS: We developed a method that combines expression data with genomic location information to discover (1) relevant transcription factors from the set of potential transcription factors of a target gene; and (2) the relationship between the expression behavior of a target gene and that of its relevant transcription factors. Our method is based on rule induction, a machine learning technique that can efficiently deal with noisy domains. When applied to genomic location data with a confidence criterion relaxed to P-value = 0.005, and three different expression datasets of yeast S.cerevisiae, we obtained a set of regulatory rules describing the relationship between the expression behavior of a specific target gene and that of its relevant transcription factors. The resulting rules provide strong evidence of true positive gene-regulator interactions, as well as of protein-protein interactions that could serve to identify transcription complexes. AVAILABILITY: Supplementary files are available from http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~h-pham/regulatory-rules

Base Sequence↗

Accurate identification of alternatively spliced exons using support vector machine.

MOTIVATION: Alternative splicing is a major component of the regulatory action on mammalian transcriptomes. It is estimated that over half of all human genes have more than one splice variant. Previous studies have shown that alternatively spliced exons possess several features that distinguish them from constitutively spliced ones. Recently, we have demonstrated that such features can be used to distinguish alternative from constitutive exons. In the current study, we used advanced machine learning methods to generate robust classifier of alternative exons. RESULTS: We extracted several hundred local sequence features of constitutive as well as alternative exons. Using feature selection methods we find seven attributes that are dominant for the task of classification. Several less informative features help to slightly increase the performance of the classifier. The classifier achieves a true positive rate of 50% for a false positive rate of 0.5%. This result enables one to reliably identify alternatively spliced exons in exon databases that are believed to be dominated by constitutive exons.

Algorithms↗

Clustering of diverse genomic data using information fusion.

MOTIVATION: Genome sequencing projects and high-through-put technologies like DNA and Protein arrays have resulted in a very large amount of information-rich data. Microarray experimental data are a valuable, but limited source for inferring gene regulation mechanisms on a genomic scale. Additional information such as promoter sequences of genes/DNA binding motifs, gene ontologies, and location data, when combined with gene expression analysis can increase the statistical significance of the finding. This paper introduces a machine learning approach to information fusion for combining heterogeneous genomic data. The algorithm uses an unsupervised joint learning mechanism that identifies clusters of genes using the combined data. RESULTS: The correlation between gene expression time-series patterns obtained from different experimental conditions and the presence of several distinct and repeated motifs in their upstream sequences is examined here using publicly available yeast cell-cycle data. The results show that the combined learning approach taken here identifies correlated genes effectively. The algorithm provides an automated clustering method, but allows the user to specify apriori the influence of each data type on the final clustering using probabilities. AVAILABILITY: Software code is available by request from the first author. CONTACT: jkasturi@cse.psu.edu.

Algorithms↗

Support vector machines for separation of mixed plant-pathogen EST collections based on codon usage.

MOTIVATION: Discovery of host and pathogen genes expressed at the plant-pathogen interface often requires the construction of mixed libraries that contain sequences from both genomes. Sequence identification requires high-throughput and reliable classification of genome origin. When using single-pass cDNA sequences difficulties arise from the short sequence length, the lack of sufficient taxonomically relevant sequence data in public databases and ambiguous sequence homology between plant and pathogen genes. RESULTS: A novel method is described, which is independent of the availability of homologous genes and relies on subtle differences in codon usage between plant and fungal genes. We used support vector machines (SVMs) to identify the probable origin of sequences. SVMs were compared to several other machine learning techniques and to a probabilistic algorithm (PF-IND) for expressed sequence tag (EST) classification also based on codon bias differences. Our software (Eclat) has achieved a classification accuracy of 93.1% on a test set of 3217 EST sequences from Hordeum vulgare and Blumeria graminis, which is a significant improvement compared to PF-IND (prediction accuracy of 81.2% on the same test set). EST sequences with at least 50 nt of coding sequence can be classified using Eclat with high confidence. Eclat allows training of classifiers for any host-pathogen combination for which there are sufficient classified training sequences. AVAILABILITY: Eclat is freely available on the Internet (http://mips.gsf.de/proj/est) or on request as a standalone version. CONTACT: friedel@informatik.uni-muenchen.de.

Algorithms↗

Collateral missing value imputation: a new robust missing value estimation algorithm for microarray data.

MOTIVATION: Microarray data are used in a range of application areas in biology, although often it contains considerable numbers of missing values. These missing values can significantly affect subsequent statistical analysis and machine learning algorithms so there is a strong motivation to estimate these values as accurately as possible before using these algorithms. While many imputation algorithms have been proposed, more robust techniques need to be developed so that further analysis of biological data can be accurately undertaken. In this paper, an innovative missing value imputation algorithm called collateral missing value estimation (CMVE) is presented which uses multiple covariance-based imputation matrices for the final prediction of missing values. The matrices are computed and optimized using least square regression and linear programming methods. RESULTS: The new CMVE algorithm has been compared with existing estimation techniques including Bayesian principal component analysis imputation (BPCA), least square impute (LSImpute) and K-nearest neighbour (KNN). All these methods were rigorously tested to estimate missing values in three separate non-time series (ovarian cancer based) and one time series (yeast sporulation) dataset. Each method was quantitatively analyzed using the normalized root mean square (NRMS) error measure, covering a wide range of randomly introduced missing value probabilities from 0.01 to 0.2. Experiments were also undertaken on the yeast dataset, which comprised 1.7% actual missing values, to test the hypothesis that CMVE performed better not only for randomly occurring but also for a real distribution of missing values. The results confirmed that CMVE consistently demonstrated superior and robust estimation capability of missing values compared with other methods for both series types of data, for the same order of computational complexity. A concise theoretical framework has also been formulated to validate the improved performance of the CMVE algorithm. AVAILABILITY: The CMVE software is available upon request from the authors.

Algorithms↗

MIPS bacterial genomes functional annotation benchmark dataset.

MOTIVATION: Any development of new methods for automatic functional annotation of proteins according to their sequences requires high-quality data (as benchmark) as well as tedious preparatory work to generate sequence parameters required as input data for the machine learning methods. Different program settings and incompatible protocols make a comparison of the analyzed methods difficult. RESULTS: The MIPS Bacterial Functional Annotation Benchmark dataset (MIPS-BFAB) is a new, high-quality resource comprising four bacterial genomes manually annotated according to the MIPS functional catalogue (FunCat). These resources include precalculated sequence parameters, such as sequence similarity scores, InterPro domain composition and other parameters that could be used to develop and benchmark methods for functional annotation of bacterial protein sequences. These data are provided in XML format and can be used by scientists who are not necessarily experts in genome annotation. AVAILABILITY: BFAB is available at http://mips.gsf.de/proj/bfab

Bacterial Proteins↗

POSBIOTM-NER: a trainable biomedical named-entity recognition system.

SUMMARY: POSBIOTM-NER is a trainable biomedical named-entity recognition system. POSBIOTM-NER can be automatically trained and adapted to new datasets without performance degradation, using CRF (conditional random field) machine learning techniques and automatic linguistic feature analysis. Currently, we have trained our system on three different datasets. GENIA-NER was trained based on GENIA Corpus, GENE-NER based on BioCreative data and GPCR-NER based on our own POSBIOTM/NE corpus, respectively, which would be used in GPCR-related pathway extraction.

Algorithms↗

ABNER: an open source tool for automatically tagging genes, proteins and other entity names in text.

ABNER (A Biomedical Named Entity Recognizer) is an open source software tool for molecular biology text mining. At its core is a machine learning system using conditional random fields with a variety of orthographic and contextual features. The latest version is 1.5, which has an intuitive graphical interface and includes two modules for tagging entities (e.g. protein and cell line) trained on standard corpora, for which performance is roughly state of the art. It also includes a Java application programming interface allowing users to incorporate ABNER into their own systems and train models on new corpora.

Algorithms↗