TY - GEN
T1 - A method for analysis and correction of cross-talk effects in pathway analysis
AU - Donato, Michele
AU - Draghici, Sorin
AU - Tomoiaga, Alin
AU - Westfall, Peter
AU - Xu, Zhonghui
AU - Romero, Roberto
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Many analysis techniques are currently available to identify the signaling pathways significantly impacted in a given condition. All these approaches calculate a p-value that aims to quantify the significance of the involvement of a given pathway in the condition under study. These p-values were thought to be related to the likelihood of their respective pathways being involved in the given condition, and to be independent. Here we show that this is not true, and that many pathways are not independent and that can considerably affect each other's p-values through a phenomenon we refer to as "cross-talk". Thus, the significance of a given pathway in a given experiment has to be interpreted in the context of the other pathways that appear to be significant. Using real data, we show that in same cases pathways with significant classical p-values are not biologically meaningful, and that some biologically meaningful pathways with insignificant p-values become significant when the cross-talk effects of other pathways are removed. We show that this phenomenon is related to the amount of common genes between different pathways, affecting the most widely used methods for pathway analysis, and we propose an analysis technique that is able to correct the over-enrichment significance of a pathway when the cross-talk effects of other pathways are removed.
AB - Many analysis techniques are currently available to identify the signaling pathways significantly impacted in a given condition. All these approaches calculate a p-value that aims to quantify the significance of the involvement of a given pathway in the condition under study. These p-values were thought to be related to the likelihood of their respective pathways being involved in the given condition, and to be independent. Here we show that this is not true, and that many pathways are not independent and that can considerably affect each other's p-values through a phenomenon we refer to as "cross-talk". Thus, the significance of a given pathway in a given experiment has to be interpreted in the context of the other pathways that appear to be significant. Using real data, we show that in same cases pathways with significant classical p-values are not biologically meaningful, and that some biologically meaningful pathways with insignificant p-values become significant when the cross-talk effects of other pathways are removed. We show that this phenomenon is related to the amount of common genes between different pathways, affecting the most widely used methods for pathway analysis, and we propose an analysis technique that is able to correct the over-enrichment significance of a pathway when the cross-talk effects of other pathways are removed.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84865095308&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/IJCNN.2012.6252654
DO - 10.1109/IJCNN.2012.6252654
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84865095308
SN - 9781467314909
T3 - Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks
BT - 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, IJCNN 2012
T2 - 2012 Annual International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, IJCNN 2012, Part of the 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, WCCI 2012
Y2 - 10 June 2012 through 15 June 2012
ER -