Glioblastoma Gene Expression Analysis

Eric Daniel

Introduction

Glioblastoma, or Glioblastoma Multiforme, is an aggressive malignant brain tumor. The serious danger Glioblastoma poses to the body is due to the cells they mutate from--Glial cells--which are predominantly astrocytes. Astrocytes are expansive cells with many tendrils which connects them to the nutrients in the blood and to the nervous system. This connection to nutrients and to other cells allows cancerous Glial cells to spread efficiently and therefore dangerously. There have been some promising discoveries, including a compound that may slow the growth of the cancer, as well as the discovery of protein biomarkers on the cell membrane. I analyzed the gene expression of Glioblastoma to explore the process for discovering which genes produce these protein biomarkers.

Project

The goal of this project is to understand and clarify the which genes produce Glioblastoma biomarkers as well as more broadly clarify the data science used in gene expression analysis.

To study the genes that are expressed in Glioblastoma cells, I used RNA-Seq data from a published work for expression analysis.

To see my work analyzing the data, visit my GitHub repository. The instructions in the repository will allow you to replicate the process.

Sources

Targeted transcriptome profiling of fresh paired normal and tumor tissue samples in glioblastoma patients [Internet]. 2020 May 28. BioProject: NCBI; [cited 2020 Oct 28]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE151352

GDC Reference Files [Internet]. 2011. Genomic Data Commons: NCI; [cited 2020 Oct 28]. Available from: https://gdc.cancer.gov/about-data/gdc-data-processing/gdc-reference-files

Liu A, Garcia de Lomana AL, Ludwig C. 2019. Counting Transcripts [Internet]. GitHub: hypercubestart; [cited 2020 Oct 28]. Available from: https://github.com/hypercubestart/Counting-Transcripts

Ghosh D, Funk C, Caballero J, Shah N, Rouleau K, Earls J, Soroceanu L, Foltz G, Cobbs C, Price N, Hood L. 2017 March 29. Cell Systems [Internet]. [cited 2020 Oct 28]; 4(5): 516-529. Available from: https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/references/S2405-4712(17)30089-3