Comparison of Univariate and Multivariate Gene Set Analysis in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Background: Gene set analysis (GSA) incorporates biological with statistical knowledge to identify gene sets which are differentially expressed that between two or more phenotypes. Materials and Methods: In this paper gene sets differentially expressed between acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) with BCR-ABL and those with no observed cytogenetic abnormalities were determined by GSA methods. The BCR-ABL is an abnormal gene found in some people with ALL. Results: gene sets differentially expressed between two phenotypes, while the Hotelling's T-2 could discover just 19 gene In addition, the performance of these methods was compared by simulated and ALL data. Conclusions: The results on simulated data indicated decrease in the type I error rate and increase the power in multivariate (Hotelling's T-2) test as increasing the correlation between gene pairs in contrast to the univariate (Category) test.