Experiments designed to quantify gene expression often yield hundreds of genes that show statistically significant differences between two classes (two biological states, two phenotype states, two experimental conditions, etc). Once differentially expressed genes are identified, enrichment analysis (EA) methods can be conducted to identify groups of genes (e.g. particular pathways) that are differentially expressed, and offer insights into biological mechanisms. One example of such a method is the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), which is very popular and frequently used for high-throughput gene expression data analysis.
This course will cover GSEA and alternative enrichment tools. Since most of their implementations are directly linked to databases that annotate the function of genes in the cell, the course will also introduce GO enrichment analysis.