Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Background
In microarray data analysis, hierarchical clustering (HC) is often used to group samples or genes according to their gene expression profiles to study their associations. In a typical HC, nested clustering structures can be quickly identified in a tree. The relationship between objects is lost, however, because clusters rather than individual objects are compared. This results in a tree that is hard to interpret.Methodology/principal findings
This study proposes an ordering method, HC-SYM, which minimizes bilateral symmetric distance of two adjacent clusters in a tree so that similar objects in the clusters are located in the cluster boundaries. The performance of HC-SYM was evaluated by both supervised and unsupervised approaches and compared favourably with other ordering methods.Conclusions/significance
The intuitive relationship between objects and flexibility of the HC-SYM method can be very helpful in the exploratory analysis of not only microarray data but also similar high-dimensional data.
SUBMITTER: Chae M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3150382 | biostudies-literature | 2011
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
PloS one 20110804 8
<h4>Background</h4>In microarray data analysis, hierarchical clustering (HC) is often used to group samples or genes according to their gene expression profiles to study their associations. In a typical HC, nested clustering structures can be quickly identified in a tree. The relationship between objects is lost, however, because clusters rather than individual objects are compared. This results in a tree that is hard to interpret.<h4>Methodology/principal findings</h4>This study proposes an ord ...[more]