Multi-dimensional cluster misclassification test for pathway differential analysis of diabetes

Gene pathway can be defined as a group of genes that interact with each other to perform some biological processes. Along with the efforts to identify the individual genes that play vital roles in a particular disease, there is a growing interest in identifying the roles of gene pathways in such diseases. This paper proposes an innovative method which measures the significance of the gene pathways in a particular disease using the concept of fuzzy set theory. Experiments have been conducted on published diabetes gene expression dataset together with a list of predefined pathways from KEGG. Results on the real world diabetes dataset identified OXPHOS pathway involved in oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria and other mitochondrial related pathways to be deregulated in diabetes patients. Our results support the previously supported notion that mitochondrial dysfunction is an important event in insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes.