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Biomedical subjects

I N Sarkar

Publications and source records attributed to I N Sarkar.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Linking biomedical language information and knowledge resources: GO and UMLS.

Integration of various informatics terminologies will be an essential activity towards supporting the advancement of both the biomedical and clinical sciences. The GO consortium has developed an impressive collection of biomedical terms specific to genes and proteins in a variety of organisms. The UMLS is a composite collection of various medical terminologies, pioneered by the National Library of Medicine. In the present study, we examine a variety of techniques for mapping terms from one terminology (GO) to another (UMLS), and describe their respective performances for a small, curated data set attained from the National Cancer Institute, which had precision values ranging from 30% (100% recall) to 95% (74% recall). Based on each technique's performance, we comment on how each can be used to enrich an existing terminology (UMLS) in future studies and how linking biological terminologies to UMLS differs from linking medical terminologies.

Algorithms↗

An evaluation of hybrid methods for matching biomedical terminologies: mapping the gene ontology to the UMLS.

Integration of disparate biomedical terminologies is becoming increasingly important as links between biological science and clinical medicine grow. Mapping concepts in the Gene Ontology (GO) to the UMLS may help further this integration and allow for more efficient information exchange among researchers. Using a gold standard of GO term--UMLS concept mappings provided by the NCI, we examined the performance of various published and combined mapping techniques, in order to maximize precision and recall. We found that for the previously published techniques precision varied between (0.61-0.95), and recall varied from (0.65-0.90), whereas for the hybrid techniques, precision varied between (0.66-0.97), and recall from (0.59-0.93). Our study reveals the benefits of using mapping techniques that incorporate domain knowledge, and provides a basis for future approaches to mapping between distinct biomedical vocabularies.

Chromosome Mapping↗

Characteristic attributes in cancer microarrays.

Rapid advances in genome sequencing and gene expression microarray technologies are providing unprecedented opportunities to identify specific genes involved in complex biological processes, such as development, signal transduction, and disease. The vast amount of data generated by these technologies has presented new challenges in bioinformatics. To help organize and interpret microarray data, new and efficient computational methods are needed to: (1) distinguish accurately between different biological or clinical categories (e.g., malignant vs. benign), and (2) identify specific genes that play a role in determining those categories. Here we present a novel and simple method that exhaustively scans microarray data for unambiguous gene expression patterns. Such patterns of data can be used as the basis for classification into biological or clinical categories. The method, termed the Characteristic Attribute Organization System (CAOS), is derived from fundamental precepts in systematic biology. In CAOS we define two types of characteristic attributes ('pure' and 'private') that may exist in gene expression microarray data. We also consider additional attributes ('compound') that are composed of expression states of more than one gene that are not characteristic on their own. CAOS was tested on three well-known cancer DNA microarray data sets for its ability to classify new microarray samples. We found CAOS to be a highly accurate and robust class prediction technique. In addition, CAOS identified specific genes, not emphasized in other analyses, that may be crucial to the biology of certain types of cancer. The success of CAOS in this study has significant implications for basic research and the future development of reliable methods for clinical diagnostic tools.

Acute Disease↗