TY - JOUR A1 - Perscheid, Cindy T1 - Integrative biomarker detection on high-dimensional gene expression data sets BT - a survey on prior knowledge approaches JF - Briefings in bioinformatics N2 - Gene expression data provide the expression levels of tens of thousands of genes from several hundred samples. These data are analyzed to detect biomarkers that can be of prognostic or diagnostic use. Traditionally, biomarker detection for gene expression data is the task of gene selection. The vast number of genes is reduced to a few relevant ones that achieve the best performance for the respective use case. Traditional approaches select genes based on their statistical significance in the data set. This results in issues of robustness, redundancy and true biological relevance of the selected genes. Integrative analyses typically address these shortcomings by integrating multiple data artifacts from the same objects, e.g. gene expression and methylation data. When only gene expression data are available, integrative analyses instead use curated information on biological processes from public knowledge bases. With knowledge bases providing an ever-increasing amount of curated biological knowledge, such prior knowledge approaches become more powerful. This paper provides a thorough overview on the status quo of biomarker detection on gene expression data with prior biological knowledge. We discuss current shortcomings of traditional approaches, review recent external knowledge bases, provide a classification and qualitative comparison of existing prior knowledge approaches and discuss open challenges for this kind of gene selection. KW - gene selection KW - external knowledge bases KW - biomarker detection KW - gene KW - expression KW - prior knowledge Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbaa151 SN - 1467-5463 SN - 1477-4054 VL - 22 IS - 3 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Perscheid, Cindy T1 - Comprior BT - Facilitating the implementation and automated benchmarking of prior knowledge-based feature selection approaches on gene expression data sets JF - BMC Bioinformatics N2 - Background Reproducible benchmarking is important for assessing the effectiveness of novel feature selection approaches applied on gene expression data, especially for prior knowledge approaches that incorporate biological information from online knowledge bases. However, no full-fledged benchmarking system exists that is extensible, provides built-in feature selection approaches, and a comprehensive result assessment encompassing classification performance, robustness, and biological relevance. Moreover, the particular needs of prior knowledge feature selection approaches, i.e. uniform access to knowledge bases, are not addressed. As a consequence, prior knowledge approaches are not evaluated amongst each other, leaving open questions regarding their effectiveness. Results We present the Comprior benchmark tool, which facilitates the rapid development and effortless benchmarking of feature selection approaches, with a special focus on prior knowledge approaches. Comprior is extensible by custom approaches, offers built-in standard feature selection approaches, enables uniform access to multiple knowledge bases, and provides a customizable evaluation infrastructure to compare multiple feature selection approaches regarding their classification performance, robustness, runtime, and biological relevance. Conclusion Comprior allows reproducible benchmarking especially of prior knowledge approaches, which facilitates their applicability and for the first time enables a comprehensive assessment of their effectiveness KW - Feature selection KW - Prior knowledge KW - Gene expression KW - Reproducible benchmarking Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-021-04308-z SN - 1471-2105 VL - 22 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER -