GOAT: efficient and robust identification of geneset enrichment

Abstract

Geneset enrichment analysis is foundational to the interpretation of high throughput biology. We here present GOAT (https://ftwkoopmans.github.io/goat), a parameter-free permutation-based algorithm for geneset enrichment analysis of preranked genelists. Estimated geneset p-values are well calibrated under the null hypothesis and invariant to geneset size. GOAT consistently identifies more Gene Ontology terms in real-world datasets than current methods and is available as an R package and online tool.