A Problem With the Correlation Coefficient as a Measure of Gene Expression Divergence
A Problem With the Correlation Coefficient as a Measure of Gene Expression Divergence
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DOI：
10.1534/genetics.109.110247
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发表时间：
2009-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Eyre-Walker, Adam
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Pereira, Vini;Waxman, David;Eyre-Walker, Adam
相关系数通常用作不同物种之间基因表达谱差异的量度。在这里，我们指出了这个统计数据的一个潜在问题：如果测量误差相对于表达差异很大，那么对于在组织或时间点之间具有相对均匀表达水平的基因，相关系数将倾向于显示高分歧。我们发现，在小鼠、大鼠和人类的数据集中，具有保守的统一表达模式的基因具有显著更高水平的表达差异，米恩使用相关系数测量，比其他基因。我们还表明，欧几里德距离产生较低的估计表达分歧的基因具有保守的统一的表达模式。
The correlation coefficient is commonly used as a measure of the divergence of gene expression profiles between different species. Here we point out a potential problem With this statistic: if measurement error is large relative to the differences in expression, the correlation coefficient will tend to show high divergence for genes that have relatively uniform levels of expression across tissues or time points. We show that genes with a conserved uniform pattern of expression have significantly higher levels of expression divergence, Mien measured using the correlation coefficient, than other genes, in a data set from mouse, rat, and human. We also show that the Euclidean distance yields low estimates of expression divergence for genes with a conserved uniform pattern of expression.