  We introduce a parsimonious model-based framework for clustering time course
data. In these applications the computational burden becomes often an issue due
to the number of available observations. The measured time series can also be
very noisy and sparse and a suitable model describing them can be hard to
define. We propose to model the observed measurements by using P-spline
smoothers and to cluster the functional objects as summarized by the optimal
spline coefficients. In principle, this idea can be adopted within all the most
common clustering frameworks. In this work we discuss applications based on a
k-means algorithm. We evaluate the accuracy and the efficiency of our proposal
by simulations and by dealing with drosophila melanogaster gene expression
data.
