No abstract

Airway remodeling in asthma is characterized by reticular basement membrane (RBM) thickening, likely related to epithelial structural and functional changes. Gene expression profiling of the airway epithelium might identify genes involved in bronchial structural alterations. We analyzed bronchial wall geometry (computed tomography (CT)), RBM thickness (histology), and the bronchial epithelium transcriptome profile (gene expression array) in moderate to severe persistent (n = 21) vs. no persistent (n = 19) airflow limitation asthmatics. RBM thickness was similar in the two studied subgroups. Among the genes associated with increased RBM thickness, the most essential were those engaged in cell activation, proliferation, and growth (e.g., CDK20, TACC2, ORC5, and NEK5) and inhibiting apoptosis (e.g., higher mRNA expression of RFN34, BIRC3, NAA16, and lower of RNF13, MRPL37, CACNA1G). Additionally, RBM thickness correlated with the expression of genes encoding extracellular matrix (ECM) components (LAMA3, USH2A), involved in ECM remodeling (LTBP1), neovascularization (FGD5, HPRT1), nerve functioning (TPH1, PCDHGC4), oxidative stress adaptation (RIT1, HSP90AB1), epigenetic modifications (OLMALINC, DNMT3A), and the innate immune response (STAP1, OAS2). Cluster analysis revealed that genes linked with RBM thickness were also related to thicker bronchial walls in CT. Our study suggests that the pro-fibrotic profile in the airway epithelial cell transcriptome is associated with a thicker RBM, and thus, may contribute to asthma airway remodeling.

This article introduces a new method of a decision tree construction. Such construction is performed using additional cuts applied for a verification of the cuts' quality in tree nodes during the classification of objects. The presented approach allows us to exploit the additional knowledge represented in the attributes which could be eliminated using greedy methods. The paper includes the results of experiments performed on data sets from a biomedical database and machine learning repositories. In order to evaluate the presented method, we compared its performance with the classification results of a local discretization decision tree, well known from literature. Our new method outperforms the existing method, which is also confirmed by statistical tests.

This paper investigates the approaches to an improvement of classifiers quality through the application of a domain knowledge. The expertise may be utilizable on several levels of decision algorithms such as: feature extraction, feature selection, a definition of temporal patterns used in an approximation of the concepts, especially of the complex spatio-temporal ones, an assignment of an object to the concept and a measurement of the objects similarity. The domain knowledge incorporation results then in the reduction of the size of searched spaces. The work constitutes an overview of classifier building methods efficiently utilizing the expertise, worked out latterly by Professor Andrzej Skowron research group. The methods using domain knowledge intended to enhance the quality of classic classifiers, to identify the behavioral patterns and for automatic planning are discussed. Finally it answers a question whether the methods satisfy the hopes vested in them and indicates the directions for future development.

No abstract