Reliable gene signatures for microarray classification: assessment of stability and performance.

Motivation: Two important questions for the analysis of gene expression measurements from different sample classes are (1) how to classify samples and (2) how to identify meaningful gene signatures (ranked gene lists) exhibiting the differences between classes and sample subsets. Solutions to both questions have immediate biological and biomedical applications. To achieve optimal classification performance, a suitable combination of classifier and gene selection method needs to be specifically selected for a given dataset.