B1321
Title: Large scale maximum average power multiple inference on time-course count data with application to RNA-Seq analysis
Authors: Jay Breidt - Colorado State University (United States) [presenting]
Wen Zhou - Colorado State University (United States)
Meng Cao - Colorado State University (United States)
Graham Peers - Colorado State University (United States)
Abstract: Experiments that longitudinally collect RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data can reveal dynamic patterns of differential gene expression. Most existing tests are designed to distinguish among conditions based on overall differential patterns across time, though in practice, a variety of composite hypotheses are of more scientific interest. Further, existing methods may lack power and some fail to control the false discovery rate (FDR). We propose a new model and testing procedure to address these issues simultaneously. Conditional on a latent Gaussian mixture with evolving means, we model the data by negative binomial distributions, introduce a general testing framework based on the proposed model and show that the proposed test enjoys the optimality property of maximum average power. The test allows not only identification of traditional differentially-expressed genes, but also testing of a variety of composite hypotheses of biological interest. We establish the identifiability of the proposed model, implement the proposed method via efficient algorithms, and demonstrate its good performance via simulation studies. The procedure reveals interesting biological insights when applied to data from an experiment that examines the effect of varying light environments on the fundamental physiology of a marine diatom.
