title: Bayesian inference with historical data-based informative priors improves detection of differentially expressed genes.
abstract: Modern high-throughput biotechnologies such as microarray are capable of producing a massive amount of information for each sample. However, in a typical high-throughput experiment, only limited number of samples were assayed, thus the classical 'large p, small n' problem. On the other hand, rapid propagation of these high-throughput technologies has resulted in a substantial collection of data, often carried out on the same platform and using the same protocol. It is highly desirable to utilize the existing data when performing analysis and inference on a new dataset.
  
  
  
  Utilizing existing data can be carried out in a straightforward fashion under the Bayesian framework in which the repository of historical data can be exploited to build informative priors and used in new data analysis. In this work, using microarray data, we investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of deriving informative priors from historical data and using them in the problem of detecting differentially expressed genes. Through simulation and real data analysis, we show that the proposed strategy significantly outperforms existing methods including the popular and state-of-the-art Bayesian hierarchical model-based approaches. Our work illustrates the feasibility and benefits of exploiting the increasingly available genomics big data in statistical inference and presents a promising practical strategy for dealing with the 'large p, small n' problem.
  
  
  
  Our method is implemented in R package IPBT, which is freely available from https://github.com/benliemory/IPBT CONTACT: yuzhu@purdue.edu; zhaohui.qin@emory.edu
  
  
  
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA and.
authors.forename: Zhaonan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA and.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Zhaohui S
authors.initials: ZS
authors.lastname: Qin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D016208:Databases, Factual; D023281:Genomics