Integrative analysis of multiple genomic variables using a hierarchical Bayesian model

摘要

Motivation: Genes showing congruent differences in several genomic variables between two biological conditions are crucial to unravel causalities behind phenotypes of interest. Detecting such genes is important in biomedical research, e.g. when identifying genes responsible for cancer development. Small sample sizes common in next-generation sequencing studies are a key challenge, and there are still only very few statistical methods to analyze more than two genomic variables in an integrative, model-based way. Here, we present a novel bioinformatics approach to detect congruent differences between two biological conditions in a larger number of different measurements such as various epigenetic marks or mRNA transcript levels.