Searching for a Source of Difference: a Graphical Model Approach

In this work, we look at a two-sample problem within the framework of Gaussian graphical models. When the global hypothesis of equality of two distributions is rejected, the interest is usually in localizing the source of difference. Motivated by the idea that diseases can be seen as system perturbations, and by the need to distinguish between the origin of perturbation and components affected by the perturbation, we introduce the concept of a minimal seed set, and its graphical counterpart a graphical seed set. They intuitively consist of variables driving the difference between the two conditions. We propose a simple and fast testing procedure to estimate the graphical seed set from data, and study its finite sample behavior with a stimulation study. We illustrate our approach in the context of gene set analysis by means of a publicly available gene expression dataset.