Using the LASSO for gene selection in bladder cancer data

Given a gene expression data array of a list of bladder cancer patients with their tumor states, it may be difficult to determine which genes can operate as disease markers when the array is large and possibly contains outliers and missing data. An additional difficulty is that observations (tumor states) in the regression problem are discrete ones. In this article, we solve these problems on concrete data using first a clustering approach, followed by Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) estimators in a nonlinear regression problem involving discrete variables, as described in the brand-new research work of Plan and Vershynin. Gene markers of the most severe tumor state are finally provided using the proposed approach.