Patent ID: 8068994

Claim:
A method for predicting the significance of a biological pathway in a disease state, comprising: (a) providing data on the expression levels of a plurality of biomolecules differentially expressed in a disease state as compared with the same biomolecules expressed in a non-disease state within said pathway: (b) determining the probability of the presence of said plurality of biomolecules in said diseased state; (c) determining the effect of each biomolecule from said plurality of biomolecules on the expression of different downstream biomolecules within said pathway thereby providing a perturbation factor for each biomolecule in said pathway; (d) combining the statistical significance of said differentially expressed biomolecules within said pathway present in said disease state with a sum of perturbation factors for all of the biomolecules in said pathway to generate an impact factor for said pathway; (e) calculating a statistical significance of said impact factor based upon a determined probability of having a statistical significant presence of differentially expressed biomolecules in step (b) and the sum of perturbation factors within said pathway in step (c); and (f) outputting said statistical significance of said impact factor for said pathway relevant to said disease for a user.