Tree-Dependent Components of Gene Expression Data for Clustering

Tree-dependent component analysis (TCA) is a generalization of independent component analysis (ICA), the goal of which is to model the multivariate data by a linear transformation of latent variables, while latent variables fit by a tree-structured graphical model. In contrast to ICA, TCA allows dependent structure of latent variables and also consider non-spanning trees (forests). In this paper, we present a TCA-based method of clustering gene expression data. Empirical study with yeast cell cycle-related data, yeast metabolic shift data, and yeast sporulation data, shows that TCA is more suitable for gene clustering, compared to principal component analysis (PCA) as well as ICA.