Analysis of Co-Expression Module of Liver Metastasis Genes in Colorectal Cancer and Mining of Potential High-Expression Biomarkers

Abstract

AimsThe Hub genes highly related to the disease were found from the gene co-expression module, and the potential high expression genes were analyzed to predict the liver metastasis of colorectal cancer, so as to provide reference for subsequent targeted therapy.MethodsIn this study, we used the public data set of GEO database (GSE50760) to analyze the gene co-expression of liver metastasis of colon cancer, primary colon cancer and normal colon tissue (54 cases) and 50 cases of clinical cases. The functional annotations based on GO database are enriched, and the functional annotations of five gene modules are obtained through the enrichment of biological processes. Then the data mining is carried out to find the sub-networks with high adjacency in the gene co-expression network. At the same time, these sub-networks are annotated to find oncogenes related to liver metastasis of colorectal cancer.ResultsThis experiment found that KRAS, APC, FBXW7, PIK3CA, TP53 were highly correlated with liver metastasis of colorectal cancer. Finally, two protein genes STAT1 and MAPK1 were found by MCODE, which may be highly correlated with liver metastasis of colorectal cancer. Two new genes with high expression proteins found in this experiment have potential cancer, which has not been reflected in previous studies.ConclusionAccording to clinical data, KRAS, APC, FBXW7, PIK3CA, TP53 are related to colorectal cancer liver metastasis, and the analysis of the data set shows that STAT1 and MAPK1 are not only related to colorectal cancer liver metastasis oncogene but also related to clinically obtained genes.