Applications of meta-analysis in multi-omics

Abstract:

As a statistical method integrating multi-features and multi-data, meta-analysis was introduced to the field of life science in the 1990s. With the rapid advances in high-throughput technologies, life omics, the core of which are genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics, is becoming the new hot spot of life science. Although the fast output of massive data has promoted the development of omics study, it results in excessive data that are difficult to integrate systematically. In this case, meta-analysis is frequently applied to analyze different types of data and is improved continuously. Here, we firstl summarize the representative meta-analysis methods systematically, and then study the current applications of meta-analysis in various omics fields, finally we discuss the still-existing problems and the future development of meta-analysis.