7,502 research outputs found
Connecting Seed Lists of Mammalian Proteins Using Steiner Trees
Multivariate experiments and genomics studies applied to mammalian cells often produce lists of genes or proteins altered under treatment/disease vs. control/normal conditions. Such lists can be identified in known protein-protein interaction networks to produce subnetworks that “connect” the genes or proteins from the lists. Such subnetworks are valuable for biologists since they can suggest regulatory mechanisms that are altered under different conditions. Often such subnetworks are overloaded with links and nodes resulting in connectivity diagrams that are illegible due to edge overlap. In this study, we attempt to address this problem by implementing an approximation to the Steiner Tree problem to connect seed lists of mammalian proteins/genes using literature-based protein-protein interaction networks. To avoid over-representation of hubs in the resultant Steiner Trees we assign a cost to Steiner Vertices based on their connectivity degree. We applied the algorithm to lists of genes commonly mutated in colorectal cancer to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach
BeWith: A Between-Within Method to Discover Relationships between Cancer Modules via Integrated Analysis of Mutual Exclusivity, Co-occurrence and Functional Interactions
The analysis of the mutational landscape of cancer, including mutual
exclusivity and co-occurrence of mutations, has been instrumental in studying
the disease. We hypothesized that exploring the interplay between
co-occurrence, mutual exclusivity, and functional interactions between genes
will further improve our understanding of the disease and help to uncover new
relations between cancer driving genes and pathways. To this end, we designed a
general framework, BeWith, for identifying modules with different combinations
of mutation and interaction patterns. We focused on three different settings of
the BeWith schema: (i) BeME-WithFun in which the relations between modules are
enriched with mutual exclusivity while genes within each module are
functionally related; (ii) BeME-WithCo which combines mutual exclusivity
between modules with co-occurrence within modules; and (iii) BeCo-WithMEFun
which ensures co-occurrence between modules while the within module relations
combine mutual exclusivity and functional interactions. We formulated the
BeWith framework using Integer Linear Programming (ILP), enabling us to find
optimally scoring sets of modules. Our results demonstrate the utility of
BeWith in providing novel information about mutational patterns, driver genes,
and pathways. In particular, BeME-WithFun helped identify functionally coherent
modules that might be relevant for cancer progression. In addition to finding
previously well-known drivers, the identified modules pointed to the importance
of the interaction between NCOR and NCOA3 in breast cancer. Additionally, an
application of the BeME-WithCo setting revealed that gene groups differ with
respect to their vulnerability to different mutagenic processes, and helped us
to uncover pairs of genes with potentially synergetic effects, including a
potential synergy between mutations in TP53 and metastasis related DCC gene
Identifying driver mutations in sequenced cancer genomes: computational approaches to enable precision medicine
High-throughput DNA sequencing is revolutionizing the study of cancer and enabling the measurement of the somatic mutations that drive cancer development. However, the resulting sequencing datasets are large and complex, obscuring the clinically important mutations in a background of errors, noise, and random mutations. Here, we review computational approaches to identify somatic mutations in cancer genome sequences and to distinguish the driver mutations that are responsible for cancer from random, passenger mutations. First, we describe approaches to detect somatic mutations from high-throughput DNA sequencing data, particularly for tumor samples that comprise heterogeneous populations of cells. Next, we review computational approaches that aim to predict driver mutations according to their frequency of occurrence in a cohort of samples, or according to their predicted functional impact on protein sequence or structure. Finally, we review techniques to identify recurrent combinations of somatic mutations, including approaches that examine mutations in known pathways or protein-interaction networks, as well as de novo approaches that identify combinations of mutations according to statistical patterns of mutual exclusivity. These techniques, coupled with advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing, are enabling precision medicine approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer
Targeting BRCA1-BER deficient breast cancer by ATM or DNA-PKcs blockade either alone or in combination with cisplatin for personalized therapy
BRCA1, a key factor in homologous recombination repair may also regulate base excision repair (BER). Targeting BRCA1-BER deficient cells by blockade of ATM and DNA-PKcs could be a promising strategy in breast cancer. We investigated BRCA1, XRCC1 and pol β protein expression in two cohorts (n=1602 sporadic and n=50 germ-line BRCA1 mutated) and mRNA expression in two cohorts (n=1952 and n=249). Artificial neural network analysis for BRCA1-DNA repair interacting genes was conducted in 249 tumours. Pre-clinically, BRCA1 proficient and deficient cells were DNA repair expression profiled and evaluated for synthetic lethality using ATM and DNA-PKcs inhibitors either alone or in combination with cisplatin. In human tumours, BRCA1 negativity was strongly associated with low XRCC1, and low pol β at mRNA and protein levels (p<0.0001). In patients with BRCA1 negative tumours, low XRCC1 or low pol β expression was significantly associated with poor survival in univariate and multivariate analysis compared to high XRCC1 or high pol β expressing BRCA1 negative tumours (ps<0.05). Pre-clinically, BRCA1 negative cancer cells exhibit low mRNA and low protein expression of XRCC1 and pol β. BRCA1-BER deficient cells were sensitive to ATM and DNA-PKcs inhibitor treatment either alone or in combination with cisplatin and synthetic lethality was evidenced by DNA double strand breaks accumulation, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. We conclude that XRCC1 and pol β expression status in BRCA1 negative tumours may have prognostic significance. BRCA1-BER deficient cells could be targeted by ATM or DNA-PKcs inhibitors for personalized therapy
CancerLinker: Explorations of Cancer Study Network
Interactive visualization tools are highly desirable to biologist and cancer
researchers to explore the complex structures, detect patterns and find out the
relationships among bio-molecules responsible for a cancer type. A pathway
contains various bio-molecules in different layers of the cell which is
responsible for specific cancer type. Researchers are highly interested in
understanding the relationships among the proteins of different pathways and
furthermore want to know how those proteins are interacting in different
pathways for various cancer types. Biologists find it useful to merge the data
of different cancer studies in a single network and see the relationships among
the different proteins which can help them detect the common proteins in cancer
studies and hence reveal the pattern of interactions of those proteins. We
introduce the CancerLinker, a visual analytic tool that helps researchers
explore cancer study interaction network. Twenty-six cancer studies are merged
to explore pathway data and bio-molecules relationships that can provide the
answers to some significant questions which are helpful in cancer research. The
CancerLinker also helps biologists explore the critical mutated proteins in
multiple cancer studies. A bubble graph is constructed to visualize common
protein based on its frequency and biological assemblies. Parallel coordinates
highlight patterns of patient profiles (obtained from cBioportal by WebAPI
services) on different attributes for a specified cancer studyComment: 7 pages, 9 figure
Gains in Power from Structured Two-Sample Tests of Means on Graphs
We consider multivariate two-sample tests of means, where the location shift
between the two populations is expected to be related to a known graph
structure. An important application of such tests is the detection of
differentially expressed genes between two patient populations, as shifts in
expression levels are expected to be coherent with the structure of graphs
reflecting gene properties such as biological process, molecular function,
regulation, or metabolism. For a fixed graph of interest, we demonstrate that
accounting for graph structure can yield more powerful tests under the
assumption of smooth distribution shift on the graph. We also investigate the
identification of non-homogeneous subgraphs of a given large graph, which poses
both computational and multiple testing problems. The relevance and benefits of
the proposed approach are illustrated on synthetic data and on breast cancer
gene expression data analyzed in context of KEGG pathways
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