Cross-species identification of cancer-resistance associated genes uncovers their relevance to human cancer risk
Summary (2 min read)
INTRODUCTION
- Animal species are known to have dramatic differences in their cancer rates and lifespans, and several animals are considered cancer resistant while others are considered to be cancer prone (Gorbunova et al. 2014; Albuquerque et al. 2018).
- Cancer risk does not correlate with body size across species, a contradiction known as Peto’s paradox (Peto, 1947; Tollis et al., 2017; Seluanov et al. 2018).
- Note for a short review of such mechanisms).
- Unlike previous studies that focused exclusively on mammals, here the authors perform a comprehensive genome-wide comparative study aimed at identifying genes related to cancer resistance across a wide range of vertebrate species.
- Finally, the genes identified from this phylogenetic analysis are enriched for cancer driver genes and in genes associated with cancer risk in humans.
RESULTS
- Computing gene conservation and species cancer-resistance estimates.
- For each gene, the authors computed the Pearson correlation coefficient between its conservation scores and the cancer-resistance estimates (MLTAW and MLCAW) across all species (Tables S2A,B; Methods).
- The authors then computed the pathway enrichment of the positive and of the negatively correlated genes (termed PC or NC genes, respectively) (Tables S3A,B; Methods).
- Species with the top and bottom 5% MLCAW values in (A), the top and bottom 10% MLTAW or MLCAW values in (B,C), all data-points in (D), are labeled by their common names.
- The authors manually curated the lists of PC genes, identifying a subset showing relevance to cancers based on multiple criteria according to the various analyses performed above (e.g., being human cancer drivers, genes whose knockout results in cancer-related phenotypes in mice, etc. Methods; Table S8), and investigated their functions closely.
DISCUSSION
- The authors systematically analyzed the genomes of almost 200 species to identify genes whose conservation levels are correlated with cancer resistance estimates across different taxonomic groups and characterized their functional enrichment.
- These results echo those of a recent study showing that cell cycle, DNA repair, NF-κB-related, and immunity pathways have higher evolutionary constraints in larger and longer-living mammals (Kowalczyk et al. 2020).
- First, the gene conservation computation is based on comparison to a reference species and rank normalization, which does not consider paralogous genes or the phylogenetic tree structure.
- Additionally, most of their downstream analyses were on the pathway-level, which mitigates the potential variation due to paralogs.
- In summary, this study presents a systematic species comparison identifying key genes and pathways associated with cancer resistance across species.
METHODS
- The authors created a matrix of conservation scores for 20076 genes across 240 species with human genome as a reference.
- Finally, the conservation scores were obtained by ranknormalizing the protein length-normalized bit scores across genes within each species, to control for the evolutionary distance between human and each species.
- To identify cancer resistance-associated genes (PC or NC genes), the authors computed the Pearson correlation coefficient between the conservation scores of each gene and each of the two cancer-resistance estimates (MLTAW and MLCAW) after proper transformation (described above).
- All the genes were ranked by the Spearman’s correlation coefficient, and the enrichment of the PC or NC genes for genes associated with lifetime cancer risk across human tissues was tested with GSEA.
- For each of the PC/NC genes from the various analyses (at FDR<0.1), the authors look for supporting evidence from many of the different analyses described in the manuscript.
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Frequently Asked Questions (9)
Q2. What are the future works in "Cross-species identification of cancer-resistance associated genes uncovers their relevance to human cancer risk" ?
Lastly, although the knockout mouse data validates the cancer-resistance function of many PC genes ( Fig. 4E ), further studies are obviously required for testing the roles of PC and NC genes ( and their curated gene list in Table S8 ) in human carcinogenesis. Many of the genes identified are implicated in human cancers, and their further study may increase their understanding of human cancer development, prevention and treatment.
Q3. What is the significance of the expression of PC genes in human tissue?
The expression of PC genes in normal human tissues is associated with their lifetime cancer riskAs PC genes are enriched for human TSGs and oncogenes, they may also have roles in modulating human cancer risk.
Q4. What are the top PC-enriched pathways using the MLTAW measure?
The top PC-enriched pathways using the MLTAW measure, where both body size and lifespan are multiplication factors, are dominated by cell cycle regulation and transcription/RNA regulation (Fig. S1), suggesting a stronger role of tissue stem cell division.
Q5. What is the evidence considered for the melanoma model?
Evidence considered are if a gene is: (a) a PC or NC gene (at FDR<0.1) for the all-species, mammals-only, birds-only analysis using both the estimates; (b) human oncogene or tumor suppressor; (c) whose knockout causes early cancer incidence or early cancer onset in mice; (d) is a loss-of-function gene in CTVT; (e) GWAS gene associated with human cancers; (f) expressed mutated genes in single-cell phylogeny of a mouse melanoma model.
Q6. What is the relevance of PC and NC genes to cancer risk in other mammalian species?
PC genes are associated with cancer incidence in mice and canine transmissible venereal tumorsThe authors investigated the relevance of PC and NC genes to cancer risk in other mammalian species.
Q7. What are some of the genes that are currently under investigation for association to cancer risk?
Some of the manually prioritized genes the authors identified are currently under investigation for association to cancer risk, and their results may support greater consideration of their contribution to human cancer development.
Q8. What are the results of a recent study showing that cell cycle, DNA repair, NF?
These results echo those of a recent study showing that cell cycle, DNA repair, NF-κB-related, and immunity pathways have higher evolutionary constraints in larger and longer-living mammals (Kowalczyk et al. 2020).
Q9. What is the median conservation score of all genes in a species?
the authors used either TSGs alone, or oncogenes alone, or TSGs combined with oncogenes to compute the CR score: (Number of TSGs, or oncogenes, or combined > MCS) / (Total number of genes), where MCS is the median conservation score of all genes in a species.