DEACT: An Online Tool for Analysing Complementary RNA-Seq Studies - A Case Study of Knockdown and Upregulated FLI1 in Breast Cancer Cells

Understanding the genetic basis of disease may lead to the development of life-saving diagnostics and therapeutics. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) gives a snapshot of cellular processes via high-throughput transcriptome sequencing. Meta-analysis of multiple RNA-Seq experiments has the potential to (a) elucidate gene function under different conditions and (b) compare results in replicate experiments. To simplify such meta-analyses, we created the Dataset Exploration And Curation Tool (DEACT), an interactive, user-friendly web application. DEACT allows users to (1) interactively visualize RNA-Seq data, (2) select genes of interest through the user interface, and (3) download subsets for downstream analyses. We tested DEACT using two complementary RNA-seq studies resulting from knockdown and gain-of-function FLI1 in an aggressive breast cancer cell line. We performed fixed gene-set enrichment analysis on four subsets of genes selected through DEACT. Each subset implicated different metabolic pathways, demonstrating the power of DEACT in driving downstream analysis of complementary RNA-Seq studies.

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