Gene Expression Analysis in Multi-Agent Environment

This paper presents a multi-agent approach to gene expression analysis and illustrates the working steps using real dataset produced from a microarray experiment. The analysis can be conducted in a multi-agent environment with majority of the workload automated by agents at different stages of processing. Conceptually, the analysis process can be divided into three distinct steps: (1) data preprocessing, (2) statistical analysis, and (3) biological inference. In addition, each step involves different stages of processing. We implement a multi-agent system that provides process automation within each step using agents with different abilities. We also explore the parallelism of data processing using multi-agent system. The strength of our system is in its ability to support concurrent processing of gene data and the modular structural design that tailors to biologists’ demands. We also discuss the possibility of applying Machine Learning technique to analyze gene expression data in a multi-agent environment.