Investigating the gene expression profiles of cells in seven embryonic stages with machine learning algorithms.

Journal: Genomics
PMID:

Abstract

The development of embryonic cells involves several continuous stages, and some genes are related to embryogenesis. To date, few studies have systematically investigated changes in gene expression profiles during mammalian embryogenesis. In this study, a computational analysis using machine learning algorithms was performed on the gene expression profiles of mouse embryonic cells at seven stages. First, the profiles were analyzed through a powerful Monte Carlo feature selection method for the generation of a feature list. Second, increment feature selection was applied on the list by incorporating two classification algorithms: support vector machine (SVM) and repeated incremental pruning to produce error reduction (RIPPER). Through SVM, we extracted several latent gene biomarkers, indicating the stages of embryonic cells, and constructed an optimal SVM classifier that produced a nearly perfect classification of embryonic cells. Furthermore, some interesting rules were accessed by the RIPPER algorithm, suggesting different expression patterns for different stages.

Authors

  • Lei Chen
    Department of Chemistry, Stony Brook University Stony Brook NY USA.
  • Xiaoyong Pan
    Department of Veterinary Clinical and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. xypan172436@gmail.com.
  • Wei Guo
    Emergency Department, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
  • Zijun Gan
    Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China. Electronic address: ganzj@shanghaitech.edu.cn.
  • Yu-Hang Zhang
    Institute of Health Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China.
  • Zhibin Niu
    College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China. Electronic address: zniu@tju.edu.cn.
  • Tao Huang
    The Second Clinical Medical College of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
  • Yu-Dong Cai
    College of Life Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.