The DJ/dS Ratio Test Reveals Hundreds of Novel Putative Cancer Drivers

Overview

Journal Mol Biol Evol

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Biology

Date 2015 Apr 16

PMID 25873590

Citations 5

Authors

Han Chen

Ke Xing

Xionglei He

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Computational tools with a balanced sensitivity and specificity in identification of candidate cancer drivers are highly desired. In this study, we propose a new statistical test, namely the dJ/dS ratio test, to compute the relative mutation rate of exon/intron junction sites (dJ) to synonymous sites (dS); observation of dJ/dS ratio larger than 1 in cancer indicates positive selection for splicing deregulation, a signature of cancer driver genes. Using this method, we analyzed the data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and identified hundreds of novel putative cancer drivers. Interestingly, these genes are highly enriched in biological processes related to the development and maintenance of multicellularity, paralleling a previous finding that cancer evolves back to be unicellular by knocking down the multicellularity-associated genetic network.

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