BiGER: Bayesian rank aggregation in genomics with extended ranking schemes

With the rise of large-scale genomic studies, large gene lists targeting important diseases are increasingly common. While evaluating each study individually gives valuable insights on specific samples and study designs, the wealth of available evidence in the literature calls for robust and efficient meta-analytic methods. Crucially, the diverse assumptions and experimental protocols underlying different studies require a flexible but rigorous method for aggregation. To address these issues, we propose BiGER, a Bayesian rank aggregation method for the inference of latent global rankings. Unlike existing methods in the field, BiGER accommodates mixed gene lists with top-ranked and top-unranked genes as well as bottom-tied and missing genes, by design. Using a Bayesian hierarchical framework combined with variational inference, BiGER efficiently aggregates large-scale gene lists, consistently achieving state-of-the-art accuracy, while providing valuable insights into source-specific reliability for researchers. Through both simulated and real datasets, we show that BiGER is a useful tool for reliable meta-analysis in genomic studies.