Development of a literature informed Bayesian machine learning method for feature extraction and classification

Background Gene expression profiling is a powerful approach to identify markers for classification of samples; however, it has major limitations that hinder performance. Typically, a large number of variables are assessed compared to relatively small sample sizes. In addition, it is difficult to identify biologically informative markers which have high predictive power [1-3]. Thus, the goal of this study was to develop a machine learning approach that is able to bridge classification accuracy and biological function.