Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.

microRNAs (miRNAs) are short regulatory RNAs that are involved in several diseases, including cancers. Identifying miRNA functions is very important in understanding disease mechanisms and determining the efficacy of drugs. An increasing number of computational methods have been developed to explore...

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Main Authors: Thuc Duy Le, Junpeng Zhang, Lin Liu, Jiuyong Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4482624?pdf=render
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author Thuc Duy Le
Junpeng Zhang
Lin Liu
Jiuyong Li
author_facet Thuc Duy Le
Junpeng Zhang
Lin Liu
Jiuyong Li
author_sort Thuc Duy Le
collection DOAJ
description microRNAs (miRNAs) are short regulatory RNAs that are involved in several diseases, including cancers. Identifying miRNA functions is very important in understanding disease mechanisms and determining the efficacy of drugs. An increasing number of computational methods have been developed to explore miRNA functions by inferring the miRNA-mRNA regulatory relationships from data. Each of the methods is developed based on some assumptions and constraints, for instance, assuming linear relationships between variables. For such reasons, computational methods are often subject to the problem of inconsistent performance across different datasets. On the other hand, ensemble methods integrate the results from individual methods and have been proved to outperform each of their individual component methods in theory.In this paper, we investigate the performance of some ensemble methods over the commonly used miRNA target prediction methods. We apply eight different popular miRNA target prediction methods to three cancer datasets, and compare their performance with the ensemble methods which integrate the results from each combination of the individual methods. The validation results using experimentally confirmed databases show that the results of the ensemble methods complement those obtained by the individual methods and the ensemble methods perform better than the individual methods across different datasets. The ensemble method, Pearson+IDA+Lasso, which combines methods in different approaches, including a correlation method, a causal inference method, and a regression method, is the best performed ensemble method in this study. Further analysis of the results of this ensemble method shows that the ensemble method can obtain more targets which could not be found by any of the single methods, and the discovered targets are more statistically significant and functionally enriched. The source codes, datasets, miRNA target predictions by all methods, and the ground truth for validation are available in the Supplementary materials.
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spelling doaj.art-ffebf8a53d8b40548f82eaf37838b8c82022-12-22T03:07:48ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032015-01-01106e013162710.1371/journal.pone.0131627Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.Thuc Duy LeJunpeng ZhangLin LiuJiuyong LimicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short regulatory RNAs that are involved in several diseases, including cancers. Identifying miRNA functions is very important in understanding disease mechanisms and determining the efficacy of drugs. An increasing number of computational methods have been developed to explore miRNA functions by inferring the miRNA-mRNA regulatory relationships from data. Each of the methods is developed based on some assumptions and constraints, for instance, assuming linear relationships between variables. For such reasons, computational methods are often subject to the problem of inconsistent performance across different datasets. On the other hand, ensemble methods integrate the results from individual methods and have been proved to outperform each of their individual component methods in theory.In this paper, we investigate the performance of some ensemble methods over the commonly used miRNA target prediction methods. We apply eight different popular miRNA target prediction methods to three cancer datasets, and compare their performance with the ensemble methods which integrate the results from each combination of the individual methods. The validation results using experimentally confirmed databases show that the results of the ensemble methods complement those obtained by the individual methods and the ensemble methods perform better than the individual methods across different datasets. The ensemble method, Pearson+IDA+Lasso, which combines methods in different approaches, including a correlation method, a causal inference method, and a regression method, is the best performed ensemble method in this study. Further analysis of the results of this ensemble method shows that the ensemble method can obtain more targets which could not be found by any of the single methods, and the discovered targets are more statistically significant and functionally enriched. The source codes, datasets, miRNA target predictions by all methods, and the ground truth for validation are available in the Supplementary materials.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4482624?pdf=render
spellingShingle Thuc Duy Le
Junpeng Zhang
Lin Liu
Jiuyong Li
Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.
PLoS ONE
title Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.
title_full Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.
title_fullStr Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.
title_full_unstemmed Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.
title_short Ensemble Methods for MiRNA Target Prediction from Expression Data.
title_sort ensemble methods for mirna target prediction from expression data
url http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4482624?pdf=render
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AT junpengzhang ensemblemethodsformirnatargetpredictionfromexpressiondata
AT linliu ensemblemethodsformirnatargetpredictionfromexpressiondata
AT jiuyongli ensemblemethodsformirnatargetpredictionfromexpressiondata