PNNL

Abstract

Background: Recent advances in microarray technology have brought with them the need for enhanced methods of biologically interpreting gene expression data. Recently, methods like Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and variants of Fisher’s exact test have been proposed which utilize a priori biological information. Typically, these methods are demonstrated with a priori biological information from the Gene Ontology. Results: Alternative gene set definitions are presented based on gene sets inferred from the SEED: open-source software environment for comparative genome annotation and analysis of microbial organisms. Many of these gene sets are then shown to provide consistent expression across a series of experiments involving Salmonella Typhimurium. Implementation of the gene sets in an analysis of microarray data is then presented for the Salmonella Typhimurium data. Conclusions: SEED inferred gene sets can be naturally defined based on subsystems in the SEED. The consistent expression values of these SEED inferred gene sets suggest their utility for statistical analyses of gene expression data based on a priori biological information