title: Gene regulation in glioblastoma: a combinatorial analysis of microRNAs and transcription factors.
abstract: Glioblastoma is the most common and most lethal brain tumour in humans. Illustrating the functions being disturbed during carcinogenesis and how they are deregulated is very important for us to understand its underlying mechanism. Transcriptional aberrations may play a vital role in the etiology of glioblastoma, which might be caused by both genomic alterations and other regulation molecules. In this study, we investigated possible cooperative deregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) and transcription factors (TFs) in glioblastoma, under the hypothesis that miRNAs and TFs might have a combinational regulatory effect on glioblastoma genes. We searched glioblastoma-specific regulatory networks by integrating glioblastoma related miRNAs, TFs and genes, and identified 54 feed-forward loops (FFLs). Follow up functional enrichment analysis of these FFLs uncovered some functions important to carcinogenesis but also some unique functions specific to the FFLs we identified.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37232, USA. xue.gong@vanderbilt.edu
authors.forename: Xue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Jingchun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Zhongming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhao
mesh_terms: D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D005909:Glioblastoma / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D008957:Models, Genetic; D012334:RNA, Neoplasm / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D012334:RNA, Neoplasm; D014157:Transcription Factors