An Information Theoretic Framework for Ontology-based Bioinformatics

Abstract

With myriad information being generated from high-throughput experiments such as microarrays and sequencing technologies, an ever-increasing amount of data is being recorded and analyzed with the help of hierarchical ontologies, such as the gene ontology (GO). We have developed a novel framework- based on the well established foundations of information theory- that allows for the evaluation of new types of hypotheses. The framework, encapsulated in open biomedical ontology-based exploration and search (OBOES), has already been applied in the investigation of different kinds of questions. The resulting framework enables the new field of information theoretic ontology-based analysis. We have applied this framework to create methods to re-engineer ontologies, explore fundamental questions on the evolution of biological complexity, determine optimal ontology terms for bioinformatics analysis, and quantify the usefulness of biofluids as proxies for tissues/diseases. In each case, we found that our methods provide novel, significant findings. An open source Java implementation of OBOES is available at: http://oboes.sourceforge.net.