Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Sep;6(3):811-816.
doi: 10.3892/ol.2013.1450. Epub 2013 Jul 8.

Functional analysis of human cancer-associated genes and their association with the testes and epididymis

Xiu-Feng Hua  1 , Xue-Bo Wang, Fu-Jun Liu
Affiliations

Functional analysis of human cancer-associated genes and their association with the testes and epididymis

Xiu-Feng Hua et al. Oncol Lett. 2013 Sep.

Abstract

Human cancer-associated UniGene sets (NCBI GeneBank) provide a platform for identifying differentially-expressed genes in human cancers. The present study identified and characterized a set of human cancer-associated genes using the Digital Differential Display (DDD) and functional analysis tools. A total of 1,904 genes were differentially expressed in 15 cancer types, including genes that had been previously shown to be specific in certain human cancers. A total of 274 genes were uniquely expressed in certain cancer types, including 37 genes that were highly expressed in the human testes and epididymis. These genes mainly functioned as ribosomal proteins, enzymes, receptors, secretory proteins and cell adhesion molecules. The most common domains that were encoded by the cancer-associated genes were those of cytochrome P450 CYP2D6, serpin and apolipoprotein A-I. A further gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis revealed seven major functional clusters, which corresponded to the enriched pathways involved in cancer. The present study provides a source of cancer-associated genes and their functions. The results provide new insights into cancer biology and the involvement of highly-expressed epididymal genes in cancer biomarkers.

Keywords: bioinformatics; cancer; digital differential display; epididymis; expressed sequence tags.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of 1,904 cancer-associated genes and 274 uniquely-expressed genes. (A) The numbers on the bars represent the number of genes; the x-axis represents the number of cancer types in which the number of genes in vertical coordinates were distributed. (B) Distribution of the 274 uniquely-expressed genes within the 15 types of cancer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Broad functional classification of 1,094 cancer-associated genes and 274 uniquely-expressed genes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Hanahan D, Weinberg RA. Hallmarks of cancer: the next generation. Cell. 2011;144:646–674. - PubMed
    1. Gray JW, Collins C. Genome changes and gene expression in human solid tumors. Carcinogenesis. 2000;21:443–452. - PubMed
    1. Klijn C, Holstege H, de Ridder J, Liu X, Reinders M, Jonkers J, Wessels L. Identification of cancer genes using a statistical framework for multiexperiment analysis of nondiscretized array CGH data. Nucleic Acids Res. 2008;36:e13. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Li BQ, Huang T, Liu L, Cai YD, Chou KC. Identification of colorectal cancer related genes with mRMR and shortest path in protein-protein interaction network. PLoS One. 2012;7:e33393. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wu Y, Wang X, Wu F, Huang R, Xue F, Liang G, Tao M, Cai P, Huang Y. Transcriptome profiling of the cancer, adjacent non-tumor and distant normal tissues from a colorectal cancer patient by deep sequencing. PLoS One. 2012;7:e41001. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources