基于Gene Ontology的表达谱与基因功能相似性的相关性研究

聚类是芯片数据分析中被广泛使用的方法。未知基因的功能通常通过其与已知基因在不同生物状态下具有表达相似性来进行预测。然而，还未有人就这种通过表达相似性来进行功能注释的方法的可靠性进行评估。本文利用Gene Ontology对表达相似性和基因功能相似性的相关关系进行了全面的研究。研究表明，尽管表达谱的相似性和基因功能相似性之间有一定的依赖关系，但相关性较弱。在Gene Ontology的三大类中，相对生物过程和分子功能，基因表达谱的相似性更有助于细胞组分的注释。本文的研究结果对于基因功能的预测有一定的指导意义。

Correlating Expression Data with Gene Function Using Gene Ontology

Clustering is perhaps one of the most widely used tools for microarray data analysis. Proposed roles for genes of unknown function are inferred from clusters of genes similarity expressed across many biological conditions. However, whether function annotation by similarity metrics is reliable or not and to what extent the similarity in gene expression patterns is useful for annotation of gene functions, has not been evaluated. This paper made a comprehensive research on the correlation between the similarity of expression data and of gene functions using Gene Ontology. It has been found that although the similarity in expression patterns and the similarity in gene functions are significantly dependent on each other, this association is rather weak. In addition, among the three categories of Gene Ontology, the similarity of expression data is more useful for cellular component annotation than for biological process and molecular function. The results presented are interesting for the gene functions prediction research area.