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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Wittig, Alice A1 - Miranda, Fabio Malcher A1 - Hölzer, Martin A1 - Altenburg, Tom A1 - Bartoszewicz, Jakub Maciej A1 - Beyvers, Sebastian A1 - Dieckmann, Marius Alfred A1 - Genske, Ulrich A1 - Giese, Sven Hans-Joachim A1 - Nowicka, Melania A1 - Richard, Hugues A1 - Schiebenhoefer, Henning A1 - Schmachtenberg, Anna-Juliane A1 - Sieben, Paul A1 - Tang, Ming A1 - Tembrockhaus, Julius A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. A1 - Fuchs, Stephan T1 - CovRadar BT - continuously tracking and filtering SARS-CoV-2 mutations for genomic surveillance JF - Bioinformatics N2 - The ongoing pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 emphasizes the importance of genomic surveillance to understand the evolution of the virus, to monitor the viral population, and plan epidemiological responses. Detailed analysis, easy visualization and intuitive filtering of the latest viral sequences are powerful for this purpose. We present CovRadar, a tool for genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. CovRadar consists of an analytical pipeline and a web application that enable the analysis and visualization of hundreds of thousand sequences. First, CovRadar extracts the regions of interest using local alignment, then builds a multiple sequence alignment, infers variants and consensus and finally presents the results in an interactive app, making accessing and reporting simple, flexible and fast. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btac411 SN - 1367-4803 SN - 1367-4811 VL - 38 IS - 17 SP - 4223 EP - 4225 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - THES A1 - Perscheid, Cindy T1 - Integrative biomarker detection using prior knowledge on gene expression data sets T1 - Integrative Biomarker-Erkennung auf Genexpressions-Daten mithilfe von biologischem Vorwissen N2 - Gene expression data is analyzed to identify biomarkers, e.g. relevant genes, which serve for diagnostic, predictive, or prognostic use. Traditional approaches for biomarker detection select distinctive features from the data based exclusively on the signals therein, facing multiple shortcomings in regards to overfitting, biomarker robustness, and actual biological relevance. Prior knowledge approaches are expected to address these issues by incorporating prior biological knowledge, e.g. on gene-disease associations, into the actual analysis. However, prior knowledge approaches are currently not widely applied in practice because they are often use-case specific and seldom applicable in a different scope. This leads to a lack of comparability of prior knowledge approaches, which in turn makes it currently impossible to assess their effectiveness in a broader context. Our work addresses the aforementioned issues with three contributions. Our first contribution provides formal definitions for both prior knowledge and the flexible integration thereof into the feature selection process. Central to these concepts is the automatic retrieval of prior knowledge from online knowledge bases, which allows for streamlining the retrieval process and agreeing on a uniform definition for prior knowledge. We subsequently describe novel and generalized prior knowledge approaches that are flexible regarding the used prior knowledge and applicable to varying use case domains. Our second contribution is the benchmarking platform Comprior. Comprior applies the aforementioned concepts in practice and allows for flexibly setting up comprehensive benchmarking studies for examining the performance of existing and novel prior knowledge approaches. It streamlines the retrieval of prior knowledge and allows for combining it with prior knowledge approaches. Comprior demonstrates the practical applicability of our concepts and further fosters the overall development and comparability of prior knowledge approaches. Our third contribution is a comprehensive case study on the effectiveness of prior knowledge approaches. For that, we used Comprior and tested a broad range of both traditional and prior knowledge approaches in combination with multiple knowledge bases on data sets from multiple disease domains. Ultimately, our case study constitutes a thorough assessment of a) the suitability of selected knowledge bases for integration, b) the impact of prior knowledge being applied at different integration levels, and c) the improvements in terms of classification performance, biological relevance, and overall robustness. In summary, our contributions demonstrate that generalized concepts for prior knowledge and a streamlined retrieval process improve the applicability of prior knowledge approaches. Results from our case study show that the integration of prior knowledge positively affects biomarker results, particularly regarding their robustness. Our findings provide the first in-depth insights on the effectiveness of prior knowledge approaches and build a valuable foundation for future research. N2 - Biomarker sind charakteristische biologische Merkmale mit diagnostischer oder prognostischer Aussagekraft. Auf der molekularen Ebene sind dies Gene mit einem krankheitsspezifischen Expressionsmuster, welche mittels der Analyse von Genexpressionsdaten identifiziert werden. Traditionelle Ansätze für diese Art von Biomarker Detection wählen Gene als Biomarker ausschließlich anhand der vorhandenen Signale im Datensatz aus. Diese Vorgehensweise zeigt jedoch Schwächen insbesondere in Bezug auf die Robustheit und tatsächliche biologische Relevanz der identifizierten Biomarker. Verschiedene Forschungsarbeiten legen nahe, dass die Berücksichtigung des biologischen Kontexts während des Selektionsprozesses diese Schwächen ausgleichen kann. Sogenannte wissensbasierte Ansätze für Biomarker Detection beziehen vorhandenes biologisches Wissen, beispielsweise über Zusammenhänge zwischen bestimmten Genen und Krankheiten, direkt in die Analyse mit ein. Die Anwendung solcher Verfahren ist in der Praxis jedoch derzeit nicht weit verbreitet, da existierende Methoden oft spezifisch für einen bestimmten Anwendungsfall entwickelt wurden und sich nur mit großem Aufwand auf andere Anwendungsgebiete übertragen lassen. Dadurch sind Vergleiche untereinander kaum möglich, was es wiederum nicht erlaubt die Effektivität von wissensbasierten Methoden in einem breiteren Kontext zu untersuchen. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit den vorgenannten Herausforderungen für wissensbasierte Ansätze. In einem ersten Schritt legen wir formale und einheitliche Definitionen für vorhandenes biologisches Wissen sowie ihre flexible Integration in den Biomarker-Auswahlprozess fest. Der Kerngedanke unseres Ansatzes ist die automatisierte Beschaffung von biologischem Wissen aus im Internet frei verfügbaren Wissens-Datenbanken. Dies erlaubt eine Vereinfachung der Kuratierung sowie die Festlegung einer einheitlichen Definition für biologisches Wissen. Darauf aufbauend beschreiben wir generalisierte wissensbasierte Verfahren, welche flexibel auf verschiedene Anwendungsfalle anwendbar sind. In einem zweiten Schritt haben wir die Benchmarking-Plattform Comprior entwickelt, welche unsere theoretischen Konzepte in einer praktischen Anwendung realisiert. Comprior ermöglicht die schnelle Umsetzung von umfangreichen Experimenten für den Vergleich von wissensbasierten Ansätzen. Comprior übernimmt die Beschaffung von biologischem Wissen und ermöglicht dessen beliebige Kombination mit wissensbasierten Ansätzen. Comprior demonstriert damit die praktische Umsetzbarkeit unserer theoretischen Konzepte und unterstützt zudem die technische Realisierung und Vergleichbarkeit wissensbasierter Ansätze. In einem dritten Schritt untersuchen wir die Effektivität wissensbasierter Ansätze im Rahmen einer umfangreichen Fallstudie. Mithilfe von Comprior vergleichen wir die Ergebnisse traditioneller und wissensbasierter Ansätze im Kontext verschiedener Krankheiten, wobei wir für wissensbasierte Ansätze auch verschiedene Wissens-Datenbanken verwenden. Unsere Fallstudie untersucht damit a) die Eignung von ausgewählten Wissens-Datenbanken für deren Einsatz bei wissensbasierten Ansätzen, b) den Einfluss verschiedener Integrationskonzepte für biologisches Wissen auf den Biomarker-Auswahlprozess, und c) den Grad der Verbesserung in Bezug auf die Klassifikationsleistung, biologische Relevanz und allgemeine Robustheit der selektierten Biomarker. Zusammenfassend demonstriert unsere Arbeit, dass generalisierte Konzepte für biologisches Wissen und dessen vereinfachte Kuration die praktische Anwendbarkeit von wissensbasierten Ansätzen erleichtern. Die Ergebnisse unserer Fallstudie zeigen, dass die Integration von vorhandenem biologischen Wissen einen positiven Einfluss auf die selektierten Biomarker hat, insbesondere in Bezug auf ihre biologische Relevanz. Diese erstmals umfassenderen Erkenntnisse zur Effektivität von wissensbasierten Ansätzen bilden eine wertvolle Grundlage für zukünftige Forschungsarbeiten. KW - gene expression KW - biomarker detection KW - prior knowledge KW - feature selection KW - Biomarker-Erkennung KW - Merkmalsauswahl KW - Gen-Expression KW - biologisches Vorwissen Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-582418 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hiort, Pauline A1 - Schlaffner, Christoph N. A1 - Steen, Judith A. A1 - Renard, Bernhard Y. A1 - Steen, Hanno T1 - multiFLEX-LF: a computational approach to quantify the modification stoichiometries in label-free proteomics data sets JF - Journal of proteome research N2 - In liquid-chromatography-tandem-mass-spectrometry-based proteomics, information about the presence and stoichiometry ofprotein modifications is not readily available. To overcome this problem,we developed multiFLEX-LF, a computational tool that builds uponFLEXIQuant, which detects modified peptide precursors and quantifiestheir modification extent by monitoring the differences between observedand expected intensities of the unmodified precursors. multiFLEX-LFrelies on robust linear regression to calculate the modification extent of agiven precursor relative to a within-study reference. multiFLEX-LF cananalyze entire label-free discovery proteomics data sets in a precursor-centric manner without preselecting a protein of interest. To analyzemodification dynamics and coregulated modifications, we hierarchicallyclustered the precursors of all proteins based on their computed relativemodification scores. We applied multiFLEX-LF to a data-independent-acquisition-based data set acquired using the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) isolated at various time pointsduring mitosis. The clustering of the precursors allows for identifying varying modification dynamics and ordering the modificationevents. Overall, multiFLEX-LF enables the fast identification of potentially differentially modified peptide precursors and thequantification of their differential modification extent in large data sets using a personal computer. Additionally, multiFLEX-LF candrive the large-scale investigation of the modification dynamics of peptide precursors in time-series and case-control studies.multiFLEX-LF is available athttps://gitlab.com/SteenOmicsLab/multiflex-lf. KW - bioinformatics tool KW - label-free quantification KW - LC-MS KW - MS KW - post-translational modification KW - modification stoichiometry KW - PTM KW - quantification Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00669 SN - 1535-3893 SN - 1535-3907 VL - 21 IS - 4 SP - 899 EP - 909 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Omolaoye, Temidayo S. A1 - Omolaoye, Victor Adelakun A1 - Kandasamy, Richard K. A1 - Hachim, Mahmood Yaseen A1 - Du Plessis, Stefan S. T1 - Omics and male infertility BT - highlighting the application of transcriptomic data JF - Life : open access journal N2 - Male infertility is a multifaceted disorder affecting approximately 50% of male partners in infertile couples. Over the years, male infertility has been diagnosed mainly through semen analysis, hormone evaluations, medical records and physical examinations, which of course are fundamental, but yet inefficient, because 30% of male infertility cases remain idiopathic. This dilemmatic status of the unknown needs to be addressed with more sophisticated and result-driven technologies and/or techniques. Genetic alterations have been linked with male infertility, thereby unveiling the practicality of investigating this disorder from the "omics" perspective. Omics aims at analyzing the structure and functions of a whole constituent of a given biological function at different levels, including the molecular gene level (genomics), transcript level (transcriptomics), protein level (proteomics) and metabolites level (metabolomics). In the current study, an overview of the four branches of omics and their roles in male infertility are briefly discussed; the potential usefulness of assessing transcriptomic data to understand this pathology is also elucidated. After assessing the publicly obtainable transcriptomic data for datasets on male infertility, a total of 1385 datasets were retrieved, of which 10 datasets met the inclusion criteria and were used for further analysis. These datasets were classified into groups according to the disease or cause of male infertility. The groups include non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), obstructive azoospermia (OA), non-obstructive and obstructive azoospermia (NOA and OA), spermatogenic dysfunction, sperm dysfunction, and Y chromosome microdeletion. Findings revealed that 8 genes (LDHC, PDHA2, TNP1, TNP2, ODF1, ODF2, SPINK2, PCDHB3) were commonly differentially expressed between all disease groups. Likewise, 56 genes were common between NOA versus NOA and OA (ADAD1, BANF2, BCL2L14, C12orf50, C20orf173, C22orf23, C6orf99, C9orf131, C9orf24, CABS1, CAPZA3, CCDC187, CCDC54, CDKN3, CEP170, CFAP206, CRISP2, CT83, CXorf65, FAM209A, FAM71F1, FAM81B, GALNTL5, GTSF1, H1FNT, HEMGN, HMGB4, KIF2B, LDHC, LOC441601, LYZL2, ODF1, ODF2, PCDHB3, PDHA2, PGK2, PIH1D2, PLCZ1, PROCA1, RIMBP3, ROPN1L, SHCBP1L, SMCP, SPATA16, SPATA19, SPINK2, TEX33, TKTL2, TMCO2, TMCO5A, TNP1, TNP2, TSPAN16, TSSK1B, TTLL2, UBQLN3). These genes, particularly the above-mentioned 8 genes, are involved in diverse biological processes such as germ cell development, spermatid development, spermatid differentiation, regulation of proteolysis, spermatogenesis and metabolic processes. Owing to the stage-specific expression of these genes, any mal-expression can ultimately lead to male infertility. Therefore, currently available data on all branches of omics relating to male fertility can be used to identify biomarkers for diagnosing male infertility, which can potentially help in unravelling some idiopathic cases. KW - male infertility KW - omics KW - genomics KW - transcriptomics KW - proteomics KW - metabolomics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/life12020280 SN - 2075-1729 VL - 12 IS - 2 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER -