Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2009 Jan;93(1):17-21.
doi: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2008.07.005. Epub 2008 Aug 23.

Design and analysis issues in genome-wide somatic mutation studies of cancer

Giovanni Parmigiani  1 , Simina Boca, Jimmy Lin, Kenneth W Kinzler, Victor Velculescu, Bert Vogelstein
Affiliations
Review

Design and analysis issues in genome-wide somatic mutation studies of cancer

Giovanni Parmigiani et al. Genomics. 2009 Jan.

Abstract

The availability of the human genome sequence and progress in sequencing and bioinformatic technologies have enabled genome-wide investigation of somatic mutations in human cancers. This article briefly reviews challenges arising in the statistical analysis of mutational data of this kind. A first challenge is that of designing studies that efficiently allocate sequencing resources. We show that this can be addressed by two-stage designs and demonstrate via simulations that even relatively small studies can produce lists of candidate cancer genes that are highly informative for future research efforts. A second challenge is to distinguish mutated genes that are selected for by cancer (drivers) from mutated genes that have no role in the development of cancer and simply happened to mutate (passengers). We suggest that this question is best approached as a classification problem and discuss some of the difficulties of more traditional testing-based approaches. A third challenge is to identify biologic processes affected by the driver genes. This can be pursued by gene set analyses. These can reliably identify functional groups and pathways that are enriched for mutated genes even when the individual genes involved in those pathways or sets are not mutated at sufficient frequencies to provide conclusive evidence as drivers.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Sensitivity (left) and positive predictive value (right) of alternative sample sizes. The black continuous line represents a single-stage design, while the dotted lines represent two-stage designs with different validation sample sizes (20, 40, or 60). Because we considered lists of the top 300 genes, and simulated data assuming that there are 1000 drivers in the genome, the sensitivity can be at most 0.3.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW. Cancer genes and the pathways they control. Nat Med. 2004. pp. 789–799. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm1087. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Sjöblom T, Jones S, Wood LD, Parsons DW, Lin J, Barber TD, Mandelker D, Leary RJ, Ptak J, Silliman N, Szabo S, Buckhaults P, Farrell C, Meeh P, Markowitz SD, Willis J, Dawson D, Willson JKV, Gazdar AF, Hartigan J, Wu L, Liu C, Parmigiani G, Park BH, Bachman KE, Papadopoulos N, Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE. The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers. Science. 2006. pp. 268–274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1133427. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Wood LD, Parsons DW, Jones S, Lin J, Sjöblom T, Leary RJ, Shen D, Boca SM, Barber T, Ptak J, Silliman N, Szabo S, Dezso Z, Ustyanksky V, Nikolskaya T, Nikolsky Y, Karchin R, Wilson PA, Kaminker JS, Zhang Z, Croshaw R, Willis J, Dawson D, Shipitsin M, Willson JKV, Sukumar S, Polyak K, Park BH, Pethiyagoda CL, Pant PVK, Ballinger DG, Sparks AB, Hartigan J, Smith DR, Suh E, Papadopoulos N, Buckhaults P, Markowitz SD, Parmigiani G, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE, Vogelstein B. The genomic landscapes of human breast and colorectal cancers. Science. 2007. pp. 1108–1113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1145720. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Greenman C, Stephens P, Smith R, Dalgliesh GL, Hunter C, Bignell G, Davies H, Teague J, Butler A, Stevens C, Edkins S, O’Meara S, Vastrik I, Schmidt EE, Avis T, Barthorpe S, Bhamra G, Buck G, Choudhury B, Clements J, Cole J, Dicks E, Forbes S, Gray K, Halliday K, Harrison R, Hills K, Hinton J, Jenkinson A, Jones D, Menzies A, Mironenko T, Perry J, Raine K, Richardson D, Shepherd R, Small A, Tofts C, Varian J, Webb T, West S, Widaa S, Yates A, Cahill DP, Louis DN, Goldstraw P, Nicholson AG, Brasseur F, Looijenga L, Weber BL, Chiew YE, DeFazio A, Greaves MF, Green AR, Campbell P, Birney E, Easton DF, Chenevix-Trench G, Tan MH, Khoo SK, Teh BT, Yuen ST, Leung SY, Wooster R, Futreal PA, Stratton MR. Patterns of somatic mutation in human cancer genomes. Nature. 2007. pp. 153–158. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature05610. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Davies H, Hunter C, Smith R, Stephens P, Greenman C, Bignell G, Teague J, Butler A, Edkins S, Stevens C, Parker A, O’Meara S, Avis T, Barthorpe S, Brackenbury L, Buck G, Clements J, Cole J, Dicks E, Edwards K, Forbes S, Gorton M, Gray K, Halliday K, Harrison R, Hills K, Hinton J, Jones D, Kosmidou V, Laman R, Lugg R, Menzies A, Perry J, Petty R, Raine K, Shepherd R, Small A, Solomon H, Stephens Y, Tofts C, Varian J, Webb A, West S, Widaa S, Yates A, Brasseur F, Cooper CS, Flanagan AM, Green A, Knowles M, Leung SY, Looijenga LHJ, Malkowicz B, Pierotti MA, Teh BT, Yuen ST, Lakhani SR, Easton DF, Weber BL, Goldstraw P, Nicholson AG, Wooster R, Stratton MR, Futreal PA. Somatic mutations of the protein kinase gene family in human lung cancer. Cancer Res. 2005. pp. 7591–7595. http://dx.doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-05-1855. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

Substances

LinkOut - more resources