Genetic weighted k-means algorithm for clustering large-scale gene expression data

摘要

BackgroundThe traditional (unweighted) k-means is one of the most popular clustering methods for analyzing gene expression data. However, it suffers three major shortcomings. It is sensitive to initial partitions, its result is prone to the local minima, and it is only applicable to data with spherical-shape clusters. The last shortcoming means that we must assume that gene expression data at the different conditions follow the independent distribution with the same variances. Nevertheless, this assumption is not true in practice.