# Missing RNA expression data in the overall score (by disease)

**URL:** <https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304>\
**Category:** Community Feedback\
**Created:** [10 August 2021 13:47 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304 "2021-08-10T13:47:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Nicolas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/67e7ee/32.png) [@Nicolas](https://community.opentargets.org/u/Nicolas)\
**Post date:** [10 August 2021 13:47 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304/1 "2021-08-10T13:47:12Z")

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Hello,  
could no see any data link to RNA expression. Is it a ‘bug’ ?

best  
Nicolas

 ![image](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/uploads/opentargets/original/1X/d32ce366ef40d8ad1f8d6604edefebfbb54c1b00.png)

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**Author:** ![ochoa](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/ochoa/32/189_2.png) [@ochoa](https://community.opentargets.org/u/ochoa)\
**Post date:** [11 August 2021 09:48 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304/2 "2021-08-11T09:48:57Z")

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Dear Nicolas,

The result you are observing is the expected behaviour although there is a long explanation why this happens.

We suspect your querying a high-level term in the cancer branch. When looking at a disease evidence for all the targets it’s propagated up in the ontology. For example, if you are looking at cancer, some of the blue cells might be the result of propagating information up in the ontology from descendant terms like breast cancer. More info in: [Target - disease associations - Open Targets Platform Documentation](https://platform-docs.opentargets.org/associations#ontological-selection-of-evidence)

However, we observed RNA expression evidence can be very promiscuous and sometimes pollute the associations of higher level terms. For this reason, we blocked the the propagation of evidence for this data type in particular. If visiting cancer, and there is no direct evidence linking the term cancer with specific targets, the cell will be white.

Apologies because this behaviour was not made very clear in our documentation. We have added a disclaimer in the respective section.

Thanks

David

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**Author:** ![Nicolas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/67e7ee/32.png) [@Nicolas](https://community.opentargets.org/u/Nicolas)\
**Post date:** [11 August 2021 14:56 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304/3 "2021-08-11T14:56:13Z")

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Hi David,  
many tks for your answer, and I ‘think’ I understand 🙂 indeed, it was rather large ontology query: ‘neoplasm’ 😉  
best,  
Nicolas

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**Author:** ![Shicheng\_Guo](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/shicheng_guo/32/217_2.png) [@Shicheng\_Guo](https://community.opentargets.org/u/Shicheng_Guo)\
**Post date:** [2 May 2022 21:35 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304/4 "2022-05-02T21:35:49Z")

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I can understand both of you, but white still will make our users confusing, I think. Do we have any better proposal for such situation?

Shicheng

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**Author:** ![ochoa](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/ochoa/32/189_2.png) [@ochoa](https://community.opentargets.org/u/ochoa)\
**Post date:** [3 May 2022 10:17 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304/5 "2022-05-03T10:17:44Z")

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The next plot it’s from data 18 months ago, but the same principles apply. At that time we had a large number of differentially expressed genes informing about 186 unique diseases (colour gradient represents the number of associated diseases)

 ![expression_platform](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/uploads/opentargets/original/1X/25fd1a8a64977cb831d9b6b05b03a15a4e4d0a2c.jpeg)

I’m very open to listening to other proposals on how we could improve the current _ad-hoc_ rule for expression atlas evidence - [Target - disease associations - Open Targets Platform Documentation](https://platform-docs.opentargets.org/associations#ontological-selection-of-evidence)

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**Author:** ![Shicheng\_Guo](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/community.opentargets.org/shicheng_guo/32/217_2.png) [@Shicheng\_Guo](https://community.opentargets.org/u/Shicheng_Guo)\
**Post date:** [4 May 2022 23:23 UTC](https://community.opentargets.org/t/missing-rna-expression-data-in-the-overall-score-by-disease/304/6 "2022-05-04T23:23:10Z")

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@ochoa This differential expression result is only available for disease-based look-up, not target-based look-up, correct? Whether this differential expression data is downloadble for given targets among 186 diseases?

Thanks.

Shicheng