DOSim: an R package for similarity between diseases based on Disease Ontology.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The construction of the Disease Ontology (DO) has helped promote the investigation of diseases and disease risk factors. DO enables researchers to analyse disease similarity by adopting semantic similarity measures, and has expanded our understanding of the relationships between different diseases and to classify them. Simultaneously, similarities between genes can also be analysed by their associations with similar diseases. As a result, disease heterogeneity is better understood and insights into the molecular pathogenesis of similar diseases have been gained. However, bioinformatics tools that provide easy and straight forward ways to use DO to study disease and gene similarity simultaneously are required.

Results

We have developed an R-based software package (

SUBMITTER: Li J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3150296 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature