Bayesian Methods for Time Course Microarray Analysis: From Genes' Detection to Clustering

Time-course microarray experiments are an increasingly popular approach for understanding the dynamical behavior of a wide range of biological systems. In this paper we discuss some recently developed functional Bayesian methods specifically designed for time-course microarray data. The methods allow one to identify differentially expressed genes, to rank them, to estimate their expression profiles and to cluster the genes associated with the treatment according to their behavior across time. The methods successfully deal with various technical difficulties that arise in this type of experiments such as a large number of genes, a small number of observations, non-uniform sampling intervals, missing or multiple data and temporal dependence between observations for each gene. The procedures are illustrated using both simulated and real data.