Data Fusion

Thanks to the genomics era a wealth of information can be obtained from biological systems in the form of measurements of body fluids or tissue on the gene, protein and metabolite level. Furthermore, physiological parameters and environmental conditions can be quantified on a regular basis. Often the biological or analytical context of the measurements is available but usually not taken into account when analyzing the data sets. The major goal of this research line is to fuse the various sources of data of the same biological system together with the context of the measurements. Examples come from the human system where metabolites are measured in plasma and urine after consumption of polyphenol rich tea and wine in a European project of Ewoud van Velzen with Unilever, University of Gent and INRA (France). In an NBIC Biorange project of Maikel Verouden microbial metabolomics data is coupled with prior information on measurement error, experimental design and the metabolic network (connection with the Semantic Biosystems theme). The NMC project of Marcel van Batenburg focuses on fusing different sources of data with respect to their measurement error.