@article {579, title = {Formulating and testing hypotheses in functional genomics.}, journal = {Artif Intell Med}, volume = {45}, year = {2009}, month = {2009 Feb-Mar}, pages = {97-107}, abstract = {

OBJECTIVE: The ultimate goal of any genome-scale experiment is to provide a functional interpretation of the results, relating the available genomic information to the hypotheses that originated the experiment.

METHODS AND RESULTS: Initially, this interpretation has been made on a pre-selection of relevant genes, based on the experimental values, followed by the study of the enrichment in some functional properties. Nevertheless, functional enrichment methods, demonstrated to have a flaw: the first step of gene selection was too stringent given that the cooperation among genes was ignored. The assumption that modules of genes related by relevant biological properties (functionality, co-regulation, chromosomal location, etc.) are the real actors of the cell biology lead to the development of new procedures, inspired in systems biology criteria, generically known as gene-set methods. These methods have been successfully used to analyze transcriptomic and large-scale genotyping experiments as well as to test other different genome-scale hypothesis in other fields such as phylogenomics.

}, keywords = {Biological Evolution, Computational Biology, Genomics, Genotype, Models, Theoretical}, issn = {1873-2860}, doi = {10.1016/j.artmed.2008.08.003}, author = {Dopazo, Joaquin} }