Dynamic protein interaction modules in human hepatocellular carcinoma progression

Abstract

We demonstrated that integration of differential co-expression with the protein interactome could outperform the traditional differential expression approach in discovering network modules of human diseases. In our application of this approach to HCC's gene expression data, we successfully identified subnetworks with marked differential co-expression in individual HCC stage transitions and network modules with coherent co-expression change patterns over all HCC developmental stages. Our results shed light on subtle HCC mechanisms, including temporal activation and dismissal of pivotal functions and dynamic interaction partnerships of key genes.