Figure 1

Experimental design of the candidate gene prioritization process. Information filtering is organized in three levels. At level 1, all the 142 genes are considered in the analysis. At the end of level 1, three sets of genes are obtained: 1) genes that are part of relevant GO categories, 2) genes for which there is significant amount of literature, and 3) genes that are part of enriched GO categories. All uncharacterized genes from the three lists are extracted and passed to the second level of prioritization. In addition, genes with at least two supporting evidences will also be forwarded to the second level of exploration. The filtered gene set from level 2 is used as input in level 3, where physical and genetic interaction among these genes are further explored. The resulting sets of genes will be the uncharacterized genes and the genes with at least two supporting evidences, which are then prioritized further if they are interrelated with at least one physical or genetic interaction.