Challenges in proteogenomics: a comparison of analysis methods with the case study of the DREAM proteogenomics sub-challenge

• Main Authors: Tara Eicher, Andrew Patt, Esko Kautto, Raghu Machiraju, Ewy Mathé, Yan Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2019-12-01
• Series: BMC Bioinformatics
• Subjects: Proteogenomics; mRNA; Random forests; Fuzzy logic; Bayesian networks
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-019-3253-z

Abstract Background Proteomic measurements, which closely reflect phenotypes, provide insights into gene expression regulations and mechanisms underlying altered phenotypes. Further, integration of data on proteome and transcriptome levels can validate gene signatures associated with a phenotype. However, proteomic data is not as abundant as genomic data, and it is thus beneficial to use genomic features to predict protein abundances when matching proteomic samples or measurements within samples are lacking. Results We evaluate and compare four data-driven models for prediction of proteomic data from mRNA measured in breast and ovarian cancers using the 2017 DREAM Proteogenomics Challenge data. Our results show that Bayesian network, random forests, LASSO, and fuzzy logic approaches can predict protein abundance levels with median ground truth-predicted correlation values between 0.2 and 0.5. However, the most accurately predicted proteins differ considerably between approaches. Conclusions In addition to benchmarking aforementioned machine learning approaches for predicting protein levels from transcript levels, we discuss challenges and potential solutions in state-of-the-art proteogenomic analyses.