MetaQC: MetaQC: Objective Quality Control and Inclusion/Exclusion
Criteria for Genomic Meta-Analysis
MetaQC implements our proposed quantitative quality
control measures: (1) internal homogeneity of co-expression
structure among studies (internal quality control; IQC); (2)
external consistency of co-expression structure correlating
with pathway database (external quality control; EQC); (3)
accuracy of differentially expressed gene detection (accuracy
quality control; AQCg) or pathway identification (AQCp); (4)
consistency of differential expression ranking in genes
(consistency quality control; CQCg) or pathways (CQCp). (See
the reference for detailed explanation.) For each quality
control index, the p-values from statistical hypothesis testing
are minus log transformed and PCA biplots were applied to
assist visualization and decision. Results generate systematic
suggestions to exclude problematic studies in microarray
meta-analysis and potentially can be extended to GWAS or other
types of genomic meta-analysis. The identified problematic
studies can be scrutinized to identify technical and biological
causes (e.g. sample size, platform, tissue collection,
preprocessing etc) of their bad quality or irreproducibility
for final inclusion/exclusion decision.
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