Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent advances in genomics and proteomics have allowed us to study the nuances of the Warburg effect – a long-standing puzzle in cancer energy metabolism – at an unprecedented level of detail. While modern next-generation sequencing...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Herman Damir, Markovets Aleksandra A
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2011-10-01
Series:BMC Bioinformatics
_version_ 1818187252289765376
author Herman Damir
Markovets Aleksandra A
author_facet Herman Damir
Markovets Aleksandra A
author_sort Herman Damir
collection DOAJ
description <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent advances in genomics and proteomics have allowed us to study the nuances of the Warburg effect – a long-standing puzzle in cancer energy metabolism – at an unprecedented level of detail. While modern next-generation sequencing technologies are extremely powerful, the lack of appropriate data analysis tools makes this study difficult. To meet this challenge, we developed a novel application for comparative analysis of gene expression and visualization of RNA-Seq data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We analyzed two biological samples (normal human brain tissue and human cancer cell lines) with high-energy, metabolic requirements. We calculated digital topology and the copy number of every expressed transcript. We observed subtle but remarkable qualitative and quantitative differences between the citric acid (TCA) cycle and glycolysis pathways. We found that in the first three steps of the TCA cycle, digital expression of aconitase 2 (<it>ACO2</it>) in the brain exceeded both citrate synthase (<it>CS</it>) and isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (<it>IDH2</it>), while in cancer cells this trend was quite the opposite. In the glycolysis pathway, all genes showed higher expression levels in cancer cell lines; and most notably, digital gene expression of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (<it>GAPDH</it>) and enolase (<it>ENO</it>) were considerably increased when compared to the brain sample.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The variations we observed should affect the rates and quantities of ATP production. We expect that the developed tool will provide insights into the subtleties related to the causality between the Warburg effect and neoplastic transformation. Even though we focused on well-known and extensively studied metabolic pathways, the data analysis and visualization pipeline that we developed is particularly valuable as it is global and pathway-independent.</p>
first_indexed 2024-12-11T23:08:04Z
format Article
id doaj.art-9a62e9dfa7834b518bc819aec1b3e493
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 1471-2105
language English
last_indexed 2024-12-11T23:08:04Z
publishDate 2011-10-01
publisher BMC
record_format Article
series BMC Bioinformatics
spelling doaj.art-9a62e9dfa7834b518bc819aec1b3e4932022-12-22T00:46:50ZengBMCBMC Bioinformatics1471-21052011-10-0112Suppl 10S810.1186/1471-2105-12-S10-S8Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologiesHerman DamirMarkovets Aleksandra A<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent advances in genomics and proteomics have allowed us to study the nuances of the Warburg effect – a long-standing puzzle in cancer energy metabolism – at an unprecedented level of detail. While modern next-generation sequencing technologies are extremely powerful, the lack of appropriate data analysis tools makes this study difficult. To meet this challenge, we developed a novel application for comparative analysis of gene expression and visualization of RNA-Seq data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We analyzed two biological samples (normal human brain tissue and human cancer cell lines) with high-energy, metabolic requirements. We calculated digital topology and the copy number of every expressed transcript. We observed subtle but remarkable qualitative and quantitative differences between the citric acid (TCA) cycle and glycolysis pathways. We found that in the first three steps of the TCA cycle, digital expression of aconitase 2 (<it>ACO2</it>) in the brain exceeded both citrate synthase (<it>CS</it>) and isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (<it>IDH2</it>), while in cancer cells this trend was quite the opposite. In the glycolysis pathway, all genes showed higher expression levels in cancer cell lines; and most notably, digital gene expression of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (<it>GAPDH</it>) and enolase (<it>ENO</it>) were considerably increased when compared to the brain sample.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The variations we observed should affect the rates and quantities of ATP production. We expect that the developed tool will provide insights into the subtleties related to the causality between the Warburg effect and neoplastic transformation. Even though we focused on well-known and extensively studied metabolic pathways, the data analysis and visualization pipeline that we developed is particularly valuable as it is global and pathway-independent.</p>
spellingShingle Herman Damir
Markovets Aleksandra A
Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies
BMC Bioinformatics
title Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies
title_full Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies
title_fullStr Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies
title_full_unstemmed Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies
title_short Analysis of cancer metabolism with high-throughput technologies
title_sort analysis of cancer metabolism with high throughput technologies
work_keys_str_mv AT hermandamir analysisofcancermetabolismwithhighthroughputtechnologies
AT markovetsaleksandraa analysisofcancermetabolismwithhighthroughputtechnologies