scholarly journals Inferring time-lagged causality using the derivative of single-cell expression

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huan-Huan Wei ◽  
Hui Lu ◽  
Hongyu Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Causal Inference ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Gene Expression Data ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Causal Relationships ◽  
Expression Levels ◽  
Gene Pairs ◽  
Time Lagged

AbstractMany computational methods have been developed for inferring causality among genes using cross-sectional gene expression data, such as single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. However, due to the limitations of scRNA-seq technologies, time-lagged causal relationships may be missed by existing methods. In this work, we propose a method, called causal inference with time-lagged information (CITL), to infer time-lagged causal relationships from scRNA-seq data by assessing conditional independence between the changing and current expression levels of genes. CITL estimates the changing expression levels of genes by “RNA velocity”. We demonstrate the accuracy and stability of CITL for inferring time-lagged causality on simulation data against other leading approaches. We have applied CITL to real scRNA data and inferred 878 pairs of time-lagged causal relationships, with many of these inferred results supported by the literature.Author summaryComputational causal inference is a promising way to survey causal relationships between genes efficiently. Though many causal inference methods have been applied to gene expression data, none considers the time-lagged causal relationship, which means that some genes may take some time to affect their target genes with several reactions. If relationships between genes are time-lagged, the existing methods’ assumptions will be violated. The relationships will be challenging to recognize. We demonstrate that this is indeed the case through simulation. Therefore, we develop a method for inferring time-lagged causal relationships of single-cell gene expression data. We assume that a time-lagged causal relationship should present a strong association between the cause and the effect’s changing. To calculate such correlation, we first estimate the derivative of gene expression using the information from unspliced transcripts. Then, we use conditional independent tests to search gene pairs satisfying our assumption. Our results suggest that we could accurately infer time-lagged causal gene pairs validated by published literature. This method may complement gene regulatory analysis and provide candidate gene pairs for further controlled experiments.

scholarly journals GiniClust: detecting rare cell types from single-cell gene expression data with Gini index

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lan Jiang ◽  
Huidong Chen ◽  
Luca Pinello ◽  
Guo-Cheng Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Gene Expression Data ◽  
Gini Index ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Cell Gene Expression ◽  
Cell Gene

scholarly journals Uncovering Potential Therapeutic Targets in Colorectal Cancer by Deciphering Mutational Status and Expression of Druggable Oncogenes

Cancers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otília Menyhart ◽  
Tatsuhiko Kakisaka ◽  
Lőrinc Sándor Pongor ◽  
Hiroyuki Uetake ◽  
Ajay Goel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Colorectal Cancer ◽  
Gene Expression Data ◽  
Drug Targets ◽  
Therapeutic Targets ◽  
Independent Set ◽  
Driver Mutations ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Expression Levels ◽  
Mutational Status

Background: Numerous driver mutations have been identified in colorectal cancer (CRC), but their relevance to the development of targeted therapies remains elusive. The secondary effects of pathogenic driver mutations on downstream signaling pathways offer a potential approach for the identification of therapeutic targets. We aimed to identify differentially expressed genes as potential drug targets linked to driver mutations. Methods: Somatic mutations and the gene expression data of 582 CRC patients were utilized, incorporating the mutational status of 39,916 and the expression levels of 20,500 genes. To uncover candidate targets, the expression levels of various genes in wild-type and mutant cases for the most frequent disruptive mutations were compared with a Mann–Whitney test. A survival analysis was performed in 2100 patients with transcriptomic gene expression data. Up-regulated genes associated with worse survival were filtered for potentially actionable targets. The most significant hits were validated in an independent set of 171 CRC patients. Results: Altogether, 426 disruptive mutation-associated upregulated genes were identified. Among these, 95 were linked to worse recurrence-free survival (RFS). Based on the druggability filter, 37 potentially actionable targets were revealed. We selected seven genes and validated their expression in 171 patient specimens. The best independently validated combinations were DUSP4 (p = 2.6 × 10−12) in ACVR2A mutated (7.7%) patients; BMP4 (p = 1.6 × 10−04) in SOX9 mutated (8.1%) patients; TRIB2 (p = 1.35 × 10−14) in ACVR2A mutated patients; VSIG4 (p = 2.6 × 10−05) in ANK3 mutated (7.6%) patients, and DUSP4 (p = 7.1 × 10−04) in AMER1 mutated (8.2%) patients. Conclusions: The results uncovered potentially druggable genes in colorectal cancer. The identified mutations could enable future patient stratification for targeted therapy.

scholarly journals Putative cell type discovery from single-cell gene expression data

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 621-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhichao Miao ◽  
Pablo Moreno ◽  
Ni Huang ◽  
Irene Papatheodorou ◽  
Alvis Brazma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Gene Expression Data ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Cell Gene Expression ◽  
Cell Gene

scholarly journals Causal Inference Engine: a platform for directional gene set enrichment analysis and inference of active transcriptional regulators

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saman Farahmand ◽  
Corey O’Connor ◽  
Jill A Macoska ◽  
Kourosh Zarringhalam
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Causal Inference ◽  
Gene Expression Data ◽  
Transcriptional Regulators ◽  
Regulatory Mechanisms ◽  
Gene Interactions ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Inference Algorithms ◽  
Tf Gene ◽  
Mode Of Regulation

Abstract Inference of active regulatory mechanisms underlying specific molecular and environmental perturbations is essential for understanding cellular response. The success of inference algorithms relies on the quality and coverage of the underlying network of regulator–gene interactions. Several commercial platforms provide large and manually curated regulatory networks and functionality to perform inference on these networks. Adaptation of such platforms for open-source academic applications has been hindered by the lack of availability of accurate, high-coverage networks of regulatory interactions and integration of efficient causal inference algorithms. In this work, we present CIE, an integrated platform for causal inference of active regulatory mechanisms form differential gene expression data. Using a regularized Gaussian Graphical Model, we construct a transcriptional regulatory network by integrating publicly available ChIP-seq experiments with gene-expression data from tissue-specific RNA-seq experiments. Our GGM approach identifies high confidence transcription factor (TF)–gene interactions and annotates the interactions with information on mode of regulation (activation vs. repression). Benchmarks against manually curated databases of TF–gene interactions show that our method can accurately detect mode of regulation. We demonstrate the ability of our platform to identify active transcriptional regulators by using controlled in vitro overexpression and stem-cell differentiation studies and utilize our method to investigate transcriptional mechanisms of fibroblast phenotypic plasticity.

scholarly journals Putative biomarkers for predicting tumor sample purity based on gene expression data

BMC Genomics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanyuan Li ◽  
David M. Umbach ◽  
Adrienna Bingham ◽  
Qi-Jing Li ◽  
Yuan Zhuang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Gene Expression Data ◽  
Supervised Machine Learning ◽  
Tumor Type ◽  
Expression Data ◽  
Expression Levels ◽  
Gene Set ◽  
Tumor Purity ◽  
Tumor Types ◽  
Cancerous Cells

Abstract Background Tumor purity is the percent of cancer cells present in a sample of tumor tissue. The non-cancerous cells (immune cells, fibroblasts, etc.) have an important role in tumor biology. The ability to determine tumor purity is important to understand the roles of cancerous and non-cancerous cells in a tumor. Methods We applied a supervised machine learning method, XGBoost, to data from 33 TCGA tumor types to predict tumor purity using RNA-seq gene expression data. Results Across the 33 tumor types, the median correlation between observed and predicted tumor-purity ranged from 0.75 to 0.87 with small root mean square errors, suggesting that tumor purity can be accurately predicted υσινγ expression data. We further confirmed that expression levels of a ten-gene set (CSF2RB, RHOH, C1S, CCDC69, CCL22, CYTIP, POU2AF1, FGR, CCL21, and IL7R) were predictive of tumor purity regardless of tumor type. We tested whether our set of ten genes could accurately predict tumor purity of a TCGA-independent data set. We showed that expression levels from our set of ten genes were highly correlated (ρ = 0.88) with the actual observed tumor purity. Conclusions Our analyses suggested that the ten-gene set may serve as a biomarker for tumor purity prediction using gene expression data.

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