Malignancy-Associated Regions of Transcriptional Activation: Gene Expression Profiling Identifies Common Chromosomal Regions of a Recurrent Transcriptional Activation in Human Prostate, Breast, Ovarian, and Colon Cancers

Abstract

Despite remarkable advances in our understanding of a genetic basis of cancer, the precise molecular definition of the phenotypically relevant genetic features associated with human epithelial malignancies remains a significant and highly relevant challenge. Here we performed a systematic analysis of the chromosomal positions of cancer-associated transcripts for prostate, breast, ovarian, and colon tumors, and identified short segments of human chromosomes that appear to represent a common target for transcriptional activation in major epithelial malignancies in human. These cancer-associated transcriptomeres correspond well to the regions of transient transcriptional activity on chromosomes 1q21-q23 (144-160 Mbp), 12q13 (52-63 Mbp), 17q21 (38-50 Mbp), 17q23-q25 (72-82 Mbp), 19p13 (1-16 Mbp), and Xq28 (132-142 Mbp) during human cell cycle, suggesting a common epigenetic mechanism of transcriptional activation. Consistent with this idea, two of these transcriptomeres (12q13 and 17q21) seemed to be related to the p53regulated transcriptional clusters, and some of the cancer-associated transcriptomeres appeared to correspond well to the recently identified regions of increased gene expression on human chromosomes.

Keywords

• epithelial cancers
• transcriptional activation
• chromosomal domains
• expression profiling
• microarray