title: TRAB: testing whether mutation frequencies are above an unknown background.
abstract: To rigorously determine whether a gene or a set of genes have alterations that are involved in carcinogenesis requires a comparison of the prevalence of identified changes to a control mutation frequency present in tumor DNA. To facilitate this task, we develop a testing approach and the associated R library, called TRAB, that evaluates whether the frequency of somatic mutation in a given gene is higher than that observed in a control group of genes. Specifically, we test the null hypothesis that the frequency belongs to a control population of frequencies, against the alternative hypothesis that the frequency is higher. Mutation frequencies in the control group are themselves allowed to be variable. TRAB computes the a posteriori probability and the Bayes factor for the hypothesis using a hierarchical Bayesian approach.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, USA. gp@jhu.edu
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Parmigiani
authors.forename: Sining
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm / Q000235:genetics*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009154:Mutation
chemical_list: D004273:DNA, Neoplasm