The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 31, 2002
Filed:
May. 24, 2000
Joachim Theilhaber, Cambridge, MA (US);
Steven Bushnell, Medfield, MA (US);
Rainer Fuchs, Sudbury, MA (US);
Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Bridgewater, NJ (US);
Abstract
The present invention relates to a highly accurate and reproducible mathematically-based methodology for quantifying the levels of differential gene expression from microassay protocols. Specifically, the present invention provides a simple deductive approach, grounded in a Bayesian framework, to circumvent the heuristic-based limitation of previous methodologies. Rather than seeking a point-estimate of the fold-change of the level of gene expression, the present invention utilizes the derivation of mathematical formula to determine the a posteriori distribution of all the fold-changes of differential gene expression which may be inferred from the given measurements. From this a posteriori distribution the following information may be obtained: (i) an estimator for the fold-change of the level of gene expression; (ii) confidence limits for the fold-change, at any given confidence level; and (iii) a P-value for assessing the statistical significance of change. The present invention also possesses the advantage that fold-change estimates and confidence limits may even be assigned to signal pairs where both signals are zero or negative, without resorting to heuristic thresholds.