A novel clustering approach for biological data using a new distance based on Gene Ontology

Abstract

When applying clustering algorithms on biological data the information about biological processes is not usually present in an explicit way, although this knowledge is later used by biologists to validate the clusters and the relations found among data. This work presents a new distance measure for biological data which combines expression and semantic information, in order to be used into a clustering algorithm. The distance is calculated pairwise among all pairs of genes and it is incorporated during the training process of the clustering algorithm. The approach was evaluated on two real datasets using several validation measures. The obtained results are consistent across all the measures, showing better semantic quality for clusters with the new algorithm in comparison to standard clustering.