Exploring Drivers of Gene Expression in The Cancer Genome Atlas

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) has greatly advanced cancer research by generating, curating, and publicly releasing deeply measured molecular data from thousands of tumor samples. In particular, gene expression measures, both within and across cancer types, have been used to determine the genes and proteins that are active in tumor cells. To more thoroughly investigate the behavior of gene expression in TCGA tumor samples, we introduce a statistical framework for partitioning the variation in gene expression due to a variety of molecular variables including somatic mutations, transcription factors (TFs), microRNAs, copy number alternations, methylation, and germ-line genetic variation. As proof-of-principle, we identify and validate specific TFs that influence the expression of PTPN14 in breast cancer cells. We provide a freely available, user-friendly, browseable interactive web-based application for exploring the results of our transcriptome-wide analyses across 17 different cancers in TCGA at http://ls-shiny-prod.uwm.edu/edge_in_tcga.