A Global View of Cancer-Specific Transcript Variants by Subtractive Transcriptome-Wide Analysis
2009

A Global View of Cancer-Specific Transcript Variants

publication Evidence: high

Author Information

Author(s): He Chunjiang, Zhou Fang, Cheng Zhixiang, Hanhua Zhou, Rongjia Zhou

Primary Institution: Wuhan University

Hypothesis

How does alternative splicing contribute to human tumorigenesis?

Conclusion

The study identifies a significant number of cancer-specific alternative splicing events that could serve as potential diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

Supporting Evidence

  • 15,093 cancer-specific variants were identified from 9,989 genes across 27 types of human cancers.
  • Approximately 70% of the identified transcripts are novel.
  • The study constructed a database (HCSAS) to facilitate access to the identified cancer-specific alternative splicing data.

Takeaway

The study found many new ways that genes can be spliced in cancer, which might help doctors find better ways to diagnose and treat the disease.

Methodology

The study used a subtractive transcriptome-wide analysis to identify cancer-specific alternative splicing events from expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of human cancer and normal tissues.

Limitations

The study may not capture all alternative splicing events due to the reliance on available EST data and potential biases in tissue classification.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1371/journal.pone.0004732

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