title: Expression levels of 63 p53-related genes add up to similar values in 24 different tissues and are unified in cancer.
abstract: The expression patterns of 62 genes interacting with p53 have been investigated in 24 normal and cancerous tissues using NIH's dbEST library. The expression levels of individual genes, such as the TTP53 gene itself, but also other genes, vary up to 33-fold among the 24 different tissues and no consistent pattern can be recognized. However, when expression levels for all 63 genes are summed, these "cumulated levels" are surprisingly constant over the 24 investigated normal tissues. In cancers, the variation is further reduced. Essentially, the cumulated expression levels in cancer are independent of those in normal tissue. We furthermore constructed a linear statistical classifier, i.e., a weighted sum of gene expression levels, which robustly distinguishes normal from cancer tissue independent of the particular kind of tissue. Thus, despite very large differences for individual genes and considerable changes during carcinogenesis, the cumulated expressions have narrowly defined levels.
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Group, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, D 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Altenberg
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rapp
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schmitt
authors.forename: K O
authors.initials: KO
authors.lastname: Greulich
mesh_terms: D030541:Databases, Genetic; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D016147:Genes, Tumor Suppressor; D016158:Genes, p53; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D009857:Oncogenes; D011247:Pregnancy; D014018:Tissue Distribution