Somatic Mutaome Profile in Human Cancer Tissues

Somatic mutation is a major cause of cancer progression and varied responses of tumors against anticancer agents. Thus, we must obtain and characterize genome-wide mutational profiles in individual cancer subtypes. The Cancer Genome Atlas database includes large amounts of sequencing and omics data generated from diverse human cancer tissues. In the present study, we integrated and analyzed the exome sequencing data from ~3,000 tissue samples and summarized the major mutant genes in each of the diverse cancer subtypes and stages. Mutations were observed in most human genes (~23,000 genes) with low frequency from an analysis of 11 major cancer subtypes. The majority of tissue samples harbored 20-80 different mutant genes, on average. Lung cancer samples showed a greater number of mutations in diverse genes than other cancer subtypes. Only a few genes were mutated with over 5% frequency in tissue samples. Interestingly, mutation frequency was generally similar between non-metastatic and metastastic samples in most cancer subtypes. Among the 12 major mutations, the TP53, USH2A, TTN, and MUC16 genes were found to be frequent in most cancer types, while BRAF, FRG1B, PBRM1, and VHL showed lineage-specific mutation patterns. The present study provides a useful resource to understand the broad spectrum of mutation frequencies in various cancer types.

QCanvas: An Advanced Tool for Data Clustering and Visualization of Genomics Data

We developed a user-friendly, interactive program to simultaneously cluster and visualize omics data, such as DNA and protein array profiles. This program provides diverse algorithms for the hierarchical clustering of two-dimensional data. The clustering results can be interactively visualized and optimized on a heatmap. The present tool does not require any prior knowledge of scripting languages to carry out the data clustering and visualization. Furthermore, the heatmaps allow the selective display of data points satisfying user-defined criteria. For example, a clustered heatmap of experimental values can be differentially visualized based on statistical values, such as p-values. Including diverse menu-based display options, QCanvas provides a convenient graphical user interface for pattern analysis and visualization with high-quality graphics.

Gene Expression Signatures for Compound Response in Cancers

Recent trends in generating multiple, large-scale datasets provide new challenges to manipulating the relationship of different types of components, such as gene expression and drug response data. Integrative analysis of compound response and gene expression datasets generates an opportunity to capture the possible mechanism of compounds by using signature genes on diverse types of cancer cell lines. Here, we integrated datasets of compound response and gene expression profiles on NCI60 cell lines and constructed a network, revealing the relationship for 801 compounds and 341 gene probes. As examples, obtusol, which shows an exclusive sensitivity on a small number of colon cell lines, is related to a set of gene probes that have unique overexpression in colon cell lines. We also found that the SLC7A11 gene, a direct target of miR-26b, might be a key element in understanding the action of many diverse classes of anticancer compounds. We demonstrated that this network might be useful for studying the mechanisms of varied compound response on diverse cancer cell lines.

Integrative Analysis of Microarray Data with Gene Ontology to Select Perturbed Molecular Functions using Gene Ontology Functional Code

A systems biology approach for the identification of perturbed molecular functions is required to understand the complex progressive disease such as breast cancer. In this study, we analyze the microarray data with Gene Ontology terms of molecular functions to select perturbed molecular functional modules in breast cancer tissues based on the definition of Gene ontology Functional Code. The Gene Ontology is three structured vocabularies describing genes and its products in terms of their associated biological processes, cellular components and molecular functions. The Gene Ontology is hierarchically classified as a directed acyclic graph. However, it is difficult to visualize Gene Ontology as a directed tree since a Gene Ontology term may have more than one parent by providing multiple paths from the root. Therefore, we applied the definition of Gene Ontology codes by defining one or more GO code(s) to each GO term to visualize the hierarchical classification of GO terms as a network. The selected molecular functions could be considered as perturbed molecular functional modules that putatively contributes to the progression of disease. We evaluated the method by analyzing microarray dataset of breast cancer tissues; i.e., normal and invasive breast cancer tissues. Based on the integration approach, we selected several interesting perturbed molecular functions that are implicated in the progression of breast cancers. Moreover, these selectedmolecular functions include several known breast cancer- related genes. It is concluded from this study that the present strategy is capable of selecting perturbed molecular functions that putatively play roles in the progression of diseases and provides an improved interpretability of GO terms based on the definition of Gene Ontology codes.

Microarray Data Analysis of Perturbed Pathways in Breast Cancer Tissues

Due to the polygenic nature of cancer, it is believed that breast cancer is caused by the perturbation of multiple genes and their complex interactions, which contribute to the wide aspects of disease phenotypes. A systems biology approach for the identification of subnetworks of interconnected genes as functional modules is required to understand the complex nature of diseases such as breast cancer. In this study, we apply a 3-step strategy for the interpretation of microarray data, focusing on identifying significantly perturbed metabolic pathways rather than analyzing a large amount of overexpressed and underexpressed individual genes. The selected pathways are considered to be dysregulated functional modules that putatively contribute to the progression of disease. The subnetwork of protein-protein interactions for these dysregulated pathways are constructed for further detailed analysis. We evaluated the method by analyzing microarray datasets of breast cancer tissues; i.e., normal and invasive breast cancer tissues. Using the strategy of microarray analysis, we selected several significantly perturbed pathways that are implicated in the regulation of progression of breast cancers, including the extracellular matrix-receptor interaction pathway and the focal adhesion pathway. Moreover, these selected pathways include several known breast cancer-related genes. It is concluded from this study that the present strategy is capable of selecting interesting perturbed pathways that putatively play a role in the progression of breast cancer and provides an improved interpretability of networks of protein-protein interactions.