Age-Specific Gene Expression Signatures for Breast Tumors and Cross-Species Conserved Potential Cancer Progression Markers in Young Women
Figure 2
Functional and network analyses of genes specific to young women.
(A) The gene ontology and functional analysis of young-age-tumor specific genes (up/down-regulated) were performed using the Ingenuity knowledge base. X-axis indicates the significance (-log P value) of the functional/pathway association that is dependent on the number of genes in a class as well as biologic relevance. The threshold line represents a P value of 0.05. (B–C) Gene interaction network analyses of genes specific to young women and very young women, respectively. Top scoring gene interaction networks with high relevancy scores (with highest relevance score) are shown. Green/red indicates decreased/increased mRNA expression in younger patients compared to older counterparts. The color intensity is correlated with fold change. Straight lines are for direct gene to gene interactions, dashed lines are for indirect ones (D) QRTPCR validation. Grey bars represent microarray hybridizations, and, and dark bars represent values from qRT-PCR. Ratio of expression for each gene in older group (>45) to very young group (≤35) is shown as fold change. A significant correlation existed between the microarray and realtime RT-PCR results.