Abstract:

Analyzing differences between cancer-related and unrelated genes based on their topological attributes in the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. We constructed a comprehensive human PPI network with data collected from multiple PPI databases; obtained a set of known breast cancer genes from the OMIM database; and compared cancer-related and unrelated genes based on their topological attributes in the PPI network. The results obtained as follows: (1) We constructed a comprehensive human PPI network and obtained a known breast cancer gene set; (2) We showed that known cancer genes exhibit significantly different network topologies from random genes in the network. A comprehensive PPI network can help us to differentiate cancer genes from unrelated ones by their distinctive topological attributes, such as node degrees, node betweenness and maximally connected components.

Key words: protein-protein interaction; cancer genes; degrees; betweenness; maximally connected components