Abstract
Hematopoietic cancers (HCs) are a heterogeneous group of malignancies that affect blood, bone marrow and lymphatic system. Despite arising from derivatives of hematopoietic stem cells, each disease has a unique set of characterizing genomic irregularities. Gene co-expression networks (GCNs) have been useful to analyze and integrate information of cancer transcriptomes. Here, we explored the co-expression landscape in HC, by inferring GCNs from four hematopoietic cancers (B and T-cell acute leukemia, -BALL, TALL-, acute myeloid leukemia - AML- and multiple myeloma -MM-) as well as non-cancer bone marrow. We characterized their structure (topological features) and function (enrichment analyses). We found that, as in other types of cancer, the highest co-expression interactions are intra-chromosomal, which is not the case for control GCNs. We also detected a highly co-expressed group of overexpressed pseudogenes in HC networks. The four GCNs present only a small fraction of common interactions, related to canonical functions, like immune response or erythrocyte differentiation. Those genes are differentially expressed in a unique fashion for each HC. For instance, cell cycle-associated genes are underexpressed in MM and AML, slightly overexpressed in BALL but highly overexpressed in TALL. With this approach, we are able to reveal cancer-specific features useful for detection of disease manifestations.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
