Molecular stratification using gene-level transcriptional data has identified subtypes with distinctive genotypic and phenotypic traits, as exemplified by the consensus molecular subtypes (CMS) in colorectal cancer (CRC). Here, rather than gene-level data, we make use of gene ontology and biological activation state information for initial molecular class discovery. In doing so, we defined three pathway-derived subtypes (PDS) in CRC: PDS1 tumors, which are canonical/LGR5 stem-rich, highly proliferative and display good prognosis; PDS2 tumors, which are regenerative/ANXA1 stem-rich, with elevated stromal and immune tumor microenvironmental lineages; and PDS3 tumors, which represent a previously overlooked slow-cycling subset of tumors within CMS2 with reduced stem populations and increased differentiated lineages, particularly enterocytes and enteroendocrine cells, yet display the worst prognosis in locally advanced disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Weight trajectories might reflect individual health status. In this study, we aimed to examine the clinical and genetic associations of adult weight trajectories using electronic health records (EHRs) in the BioMe Biobank.
Methods: We constructed four weight trajectories based on a-priori definitions of weight changes (5% or 10%) using annual weight in EHRs (stable weight, weight gain, weight loss, and weight cycle); the final weight dataset included 21 487 participants with 162 783 annual weight measures.
Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric disorder with complex etiology, with a significant portion of disease risk imparted by genetics. Traditional genome-wide association studies (GWAS) produce principal evidence for the association of genetic variants with disease. Transcriptomic imputation (TI) allows for the translation of those variants into regulatory mechanisms, which can then be used to assess the functional outcome of genetically regulated gene expression (GReX) in a broader setting through the use of phenome-wide association studies (pheWASs) in large and diverse clinical biobank populations with electronic health record phenotypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTriple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) are resistant to standard-of-care chemotherapy and lack known targetable driver gene alterations. Identification of novel drivers could aid the discovery of new treatment strategies for this hard-to-treat patient population, yet studies using high-throughput and accurate models to define the functions of driver genes in TNBC to date have been limited. Here, we employed unbiased functional genomics screening of the 200 most frequently mutated genes in breast cancer, using spheroid cultures to model -like conditions, and identified the histone acetyltransferase CREBBP as a novel tumor suppressor in TNBC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDisruption of Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 12 () is known to lead to defects in DNA repair and sensitivity to platinum salts and PARP1/2 inhibitors. However, has also been proposed as an oncogene in breast cancer. We therefore aimed to assess the frequency and distribution of CDK12 protein expression by IHC in independent cohorts of breast cancer and correlate this with outcome and genomic status.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe initiation and progression of breast cancer from the transformation of the normal epithelium to ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and invasive disease is a complex process involving the acquisition of genetic alterations and changes in gene expression, alongside microenvironmental and recognized histological alterations. Here, we sought to comprehensively characterise the genomic and transcriptomic features of the MCF10 isogenic model of breast cancer progression, and to functionally validate potential driver alterations in three-dimensional (3D) spheroids that may provide insights into breast cancer progression, and identify targetable alterations in conditions more similar to those encountered in vivo. We performed whole genome, exome and RNA sequencing of the MCF10 progression series to catalogue the copy number and mutational and transcriptomic landscapes associated with progression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMutations in genes encoding proteins involved in RNA splicing have been found to occur at relatively high frequencies in several tumour types including myelodysplastic syndromes, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, uveal melanoma, and pancreatic cancer, and at lower frequencies in breast cancer. To investigate whether dysfunction in RNA splicing is implicated in the pathogenesis of breast cancer, we performed a re-analysis of published exome and whole genome sequencing data. This analysis revealed that mutations in spliceosomal component genes occurred in 5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenome-wide association studies have identified more than 70 common variants that are associated with breast cancer risk. Most of these variants map to non-protein-coding regions and several map to gene deserts, regions of several hundred kilobases lacking protein-coding genes. We hypothesized that gene deserts harbor long-range regulatory elements that can physically interact with target genes to influence their expression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn most eukaryotes, including the majority of fungi, expression of sterol biosynthesis genes is regulated by Sterol-Regulatory Element Binding Proteins (SREBPs), which are basic helix-loop-helix transcription activators. However, in yeasts such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans sterol synthesis is instead regulated by Upc2, an unrelated transcription factor with a Gal4-type zinc finger. The SREBPs in S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Candida Gene Order Browser (CGOB) was developed as a tool to visualize and analyze synteny relationships in multiple Candida species, and to provide an accurate, manually curated set of orthologous Candida genes for evolutionary analyses. Here, we describe major improvements to CGOB. The underlying structure of the database has been changed significantly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Candida parapsilosis is one of the most common causes of Candida infection worldwide. However, the genome sequence annotation was made without experimental validation and little is known about the transcriptional landscape. The transcriptional response of C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCandida parapsilosis is a pathogenic fungus that is major cause of hospital-acquired infection, predominantly due to growth as biofilms on indwelling medical devices. It is related to Candida albicans, which remains the most common cause of candidiasis disease in humans. The transcription factor Bcr1 is an important regulator of biofilm formation in vitro in both C.
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