Pan-cancer analysis of somatic mutations and transcriptomes reveals common functional gene clusters shared by multiple cancer types

To discover functional gene clusters across cancers, we performed a systematic pan-cancer analysis of 33 cancer types. We identified genes that were associated with somatic mutations and were the cores of a co-expression network. We found that multiple cancer types have relatively exclusive hub genes individually; however, the hub genes cooperate with each other based on their functional relationship. When we built a protein-protein interaction network of hub genes and found nine functional gene clusters across cancer types, the gene clusters divided not only the region of the network map, but also the function of the network by their distinct roles related to the development and progression of cancer. This functional relationship between the clusters and cancers was underpinned by the high expression of module genes and enrichment of programmed cell death, and known candidate cancer genes. In addition to protein-coding hub genes, non-coding hub genes had a possible relationship with cancer. Overall, our approach of investigating cancer genes enabled finding pan-cancer hub genes and common functional gene clusters shared by multiple cancer types based on the expression status of the primary tumour and the functional relationship of genes in the biological network.

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