Introduction: In recent decades, the growing rate of cancer incidence is a big concern for most societies. Due to the genetic origins of cancer disease, its internal structure is necessary for the study of this disease. Methods: In this research, cancer data are analyzed based on DNA sequences. The transition probability of occurring two pairs of nucleotides in DNA sequences has Markovian property. This property inspires the idea of feature dimension reduction of DNA sequence for overcoming the high computational overhead of genes analysis. This idea is utilized in this research based on the Markovian property of DNA sequences. This mapping decreases feature dimensions and conserves basic properties for discrimination of cancerous and non-cancerous genes. Results: The results showed that a non-linear support vector machine (SVM) classifier with RBF and polynomial kernel functions can discriminate selected cancerous samples from non-cancerous ones. Experimental results based on the 10-fold cross-validation and accuracy metrics verified that the proposed method has low computational overhead and high accuracy. Conclusion: The proposed algorithm was successfully tested on related research case studies. In general, a combination of proposed Markovian-based feature reduction and non-linear SVM classifier can be considered as one of the best methods for discrimination of cancerous and non-cancerous genes.
30 March 2025 in Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports
Radiation-induced esophagitis remains a significant challenge in thoracic and neck cancer treatment, impacting patient quality of life and potentially limiting therapeutic efficacy. This study aimed to develop and validate a decision tree-based model for predicting acute esophagitis grades in patients undergoing chemoradiotherapy. Data from 100 patients receiving thoracic and neck radiotherapy were analyzed. The dataset comprised 33 features, including demographic, clinical, and dosimetric parameters. A decision tree classifier was implemented for both binary (Grade ≥2 vs. <2) and multi-class (Grades 1, 2, and 3) classification. Model performance was evaluated using standard metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The binary classification model achieved 97 % accuracy in distinguishing acute esophagitis. The multi-class model demonstrated 98 % accuracy in predicting specific grades. Key predictive features included V40 (volume receiving 40 Gy), V60, and average esophageal dose. The model generated interpretable decision rules, with V60 ≥ 2.3 strongly indicating Grade 3 esophagitis. The decision tree model demonstrates high accuracy in predicting radiation-induced esophagitis grades while maintaining clinical interpretability. This approach offers potential for treatment optimization and personalized risk assessment in radiotherapy planning. The model's transparency and reliability make it a promising tool for clinical decision support in radiation oncology.
In recent years, viral diseases have exhibited a significant incidence of infections and fatalities. The analysis of viral genomic sequences can be efficacious in evaluating the present and potentially forthcoming condition of viruses. Considering the importance of the internal structure of the cell and the nucleotide sequences within it, analyzing nucleotide sequences can provide a range of discussable features. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that the use of graph algorithms and machine learning in the analysis and examination of virus samples and even viral variants can yield beneficial results. This study proposes a novel approach that utilizes complex networks and probabilistic graph modeling methods to analyze viral genomic sequences for feature extraction. The proposed approach, which relies on the PageRank centrality algorithm, operates on codons that are associated with the nucleotide sequences. Experiments with machine learning algorithms were conducted on multiple datasets of viruses and various variants of coronavirus and influenza viruses. The use of a decision tree classifier model on the extracted distinguishing features enabled the differentiation of coronavirus samples from other samples. The high discriminative capability of the graph node centrality feature played a significant role in these experiments, establishing a meaningful connection with genetic concepts as well. The decision tree classifier applied on 173,228 genomic sequence samples originating from 30 distinct virus types, showed a remarkable accuracy rate of 99.73%. The proposed algorithm was successfully tested on several types of viruses, and the interpretability of the extracted features also enabled its structural analysis. The use of a graph-based approach on genetic features containing information about the internal structure of nucleotides yielded results that could be significant for the identification of any type of virus or specific viral variant.
• Modeling the structure of various viruses in the form of directed weighted graphs. • Presenting a feature extraction algorithm based on complex networks metrics. • The impact of the eigen-vector, input centrality and output centrality measures of specific nucleotide triplets within genes associated with particular virus types. • The independence of the proposed approach's performance from the length or type of virus genetic data. • Utilizing an interpretable classifier with the ability to relate findings to genetic concepts by extracting rules.