title: Diversity of Gene Expression in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells.
abstract: Understanding tumor diversity has been a long-lasting and challenging question for researchers in the field of cancer heterogeneity or tumor evolution. Studies have reported that compared to normal cells, there is a higher genetic diversity in tumor cells, while higher genetic diversity is associated with higher progression risks of tumor. We thus hypothesized that tumor diversity also holds true at the gene expression level. To test this hypothesis, we used t-test to compare the means of Simpson's diversity index for gene expression (SDIG) between tumor and non-tumor samples. We found that the mean SDIG in tumor tissues is significantly higher than that in the non-tumor or normal tissues (P<0.05) for most datasets. We also combined microarrays and next-generation sequencing data for validation. This cross-platform and cross-experimental validation greatly increased the reliability of our results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth, TX 76107, USA. Electronic address: Fan.Zhang@unthsc.edu.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0949, USA.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. Electronic address: michaelkuo@mednet.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Kuo
mesh_terms: D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D018740:Genetic Heterogeneity; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D046228:Microarray Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Diversity; Gene expression; Hepatocellular carcinoma cell; Microarray; Next-generation sequencing