title: Expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition-related genes increases with copy number in multiple cancer types.
abstract: Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a cellular process through which epithelial cells transform into mesenchymal cells. EMT-implicated genes initiate and promote cancer metastasis because mesenchymal cells have greater invasive and migration capacities than epithelial cells. In this pan-cancer analysis, we explored the relationship between gene expression changes and copy number variations (CNVs) for EMT-implicated genes. Based on curated 377 EMT-implicated genes from the literature, we identified 212 EMT-implicated genes associated with more frequent copy number gains (CNGs) than copy number losses (CNLs) using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Then by correlating these CNV data with TCGA gene expression data, we identified 71 EMT-implicated genes with concordant CNGs and gene up-regulation in 20 or more tumor samples. Of those, 14 exhibited such concordance in over 110 tumor samples. These 14 genes were predominantly apoptosis regulators, which may implies that apoptosis is critical during EMT. Moreover, the 71 genes with concordant CNG and up-regulation were largely involved in cellular functions such as phosphorylation cascade signaling. This is the first observation of concordance between CNG and up-regulation of specific genes in hundreds of samples, which may indicate that somatic CNGs activate gene expression by increasing the gene dosage.
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland, 4558, Australia.
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland, 4558, Australia.
authors.forename: Yining
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Center for Bioinformatics, State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Qu
mesh_terms: D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D056915:DNA Copy Number Variations; D058750:Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition / Q000235:genetics*; D015870:Gene Expression; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology*; D015398:Signal Transduction
keywords: cancer genomics; copy number variation; epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT); gene expression; pan-cancer