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Title: Scrutinizing functional interaction networks from RNA-binding proteins to their targets in cancer
RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) participate in all stages of RNA life cycle from transcription, splicing, to translation. Under the ENCODE project, a large number of RBPs were knocked down in human cancer cell lines, offering an excellent opportunity to infer targets of RBPs. Taking both RBP binding sites and RNA-seq profiles of RBP knockdown samples as input, we present a pipeline to identify causal RBP RNA interactions. The pipeline employs a recent functional chi-square test (FunChisq) that deciphers directional association, and utilizes a novel functional index that measures the effect size of functional dependency. We examined ∼45 million RBP RNA pairs in leukemia (K562) and liver cancer (HepG2) cell lines for functional patterns as causal interaction candidates. Here, we report a total of 936,707 RBP RNA pairs in the two cell lines that show statistically significant linear or nonlinear functional patterns. About 31% of these pairs have supportive biological evidence from other sources, suggesting the effectiveness of the pipeline. The interactions constitute RBP specific regulatory networks that may potentially represent core mechanisms in the two cancers. The pipeline is implemented through an R interface with pre-computed results and data libraries for users to query specific networks and visualize RBP RNA interactions. Such networks serve as a useful resource for studying RNA dysregulation in cancer.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1661331
NSF-PAR ID:
10095378
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2018 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
185 - 190
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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