Genomic regression analysis of coordinated expression

Abstract

Co-expression analysis is widely used to predict gene function and to identify functionally related gene sets. However, co-expression analysis using human cancer transcriptomic data is confounded by somatic copy number alterations (SCNA), which produce co-expression signatures based on physical proximity rather than biological function. To better understand gene-gene co-expression based on biological regulation but not SCNA, we describe a method termed "Genomic Regression Analysis of Coordinated Expression" (GRACE) to adjust for the effect of SCNA in co-expression analysis. The results from analyses of TCGA, CCLE, and NCI60 data sets show that GRACE can improve our understanding of how a transcriptional network is re-wired in cancer. A user-friendly web database populated with data sets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is provided to allow customized query.