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Gene expression signatures that are predictive of therapeutic response or prognosis are increasingly useful in clinical care; however, mechanistic (and intuitive) interpretation of expression arrays remains an unmet challenge. Additionally, there is surprisingly little gene overlap among distinct clinically validated expression signatures. These “causality challenges” hinder the adoption of signatures as compared to functionally well-characterized single gene biomarkers. To increase the utility of multi-gene signatures in survival studies, we developed a novel approach to generate “personal mechanism signatures” of molecular pathways and functions from gene expression arrays. FAIME, the Functional Analysis of Individual Microarray Expression, computes mechanism scores using rank-weighted gene expression of an individual sample. By comparing head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) samples with non-tumor control tissues, the precision and recall of deregulated FAIME-derived mechanisms of pathways and molecular functions are comparable to those produced by conventional cohort-wide methods (e.g. GSEA). The overlap of “Oncogenic FAIME Features of HNSCC” (statistically significant and differentially regulated FAIME-derived genesets representing GO functions or KEGG pathways derived from HNSCC tissue) among three distinct HNSCC datasets (pathways:46%, p, Author Summary Clinical utilization of multi-gene expression signatures that are predictive of therapeutic response has been steadily increasing, however, interpretation of such results remains challenging because multi-gene signatures, generated from analyzing different patient cohorts, tend to be equally predictive but contain minimal overlap. Whereas pathway-level analyses of expression arrays show promise for generating clinically meaningful mechanistic signatures, current approaches do not permit single-patient based analyses that are independent of cross-group calculations. To bridge the gap between deterministic biological mechanisms of single-gene biomarkers and the statistical predictive power of multi-gene signatures that are disconnected from mechanisms, we developed FAIME, a novel method that transforms microarray gene expression data into individualized patient profiles of molecular mechanisms. We have validated its capability for predicting clinical outcomes, including cancer patient samples derived from six different clinical trial cohorts of head and neck cancers. This method provides opportunities to harness an untapped resource for personal genomics: clinical evaluation and testing of individually interpretable mechanistic profiles derived from gene expression arrays.

Due to the large number of putative microRNA gene targets predicted by sequence-alignment databases and the relative low accuracy of such predictions which are conducted independently of biological context by design, systematic experimental identification and validation of every functional microRNA target is currently challenging. Consequently, biological studies have yet to identify, on a genome scale, key regulatory networks perturbed by altered microRNA functions in the context of cancer. In this report, we demonstrate for the first time how phenotypic knowledge of inheritable cancer traits and of risk factor loci can be utilized jointly with gene expression analysis to efficiently prioritize deregulated microRNAs for biological characterization. Using this approach we characterize miR-204 as a tumor suppressor microRNA and uncover previously unknown connections between microRNA regulation, network topology, and expression dynamics. Specifically, we validate 18 gene targets of miR-204 that show elevated mRNA expression and are enriched in biological processes associated with tumor progression in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC). We further demonstrate the enrichment of bottleneckness, a key molecular network topology, among miR-204 gene targets. Restoration of miR-204 function in HNSCC cell lines inhibits the expression of its functionally related gene targets, leads to the reduced adhesion, migration and invasion in vitro and attenuates experimental lung metastasis in vivo. As importantly, our investigation also provides experimental evidence linking the function of microRNAs that are located in the cancer-associated genomic regions (CAGRs) to the observed predisposition to human cancers. Specifically, we show miR-204 may serve as a tumor suppressor gene at the 9q21.1–22.3 CAGR locus, a well established risk factor locus in head and neck cancers for which tumor suppressor genes have not been identified. This new strategy that integrates expression profiling, genetics and novel computational biology approaches provides for improved efficiency in characterization and modeling of microRNA functions in cancer as compared to the state of art and is applicable to the investigation of microRNA functions in other biological processes and diseases., Author Summary MicroRNAs regulate the expression of genes in cells and are important in cancer development and progression. Designing new microRNA-based treatments requires the understanding of their mechanisms of action. Previous biological studies lack in depth since only a few genes are confirmed as microRNA targets. Additionally, key biological systems perturbed by altered microRNA functions in the context of cancer remain to be identified. Here, we demonstrate for the first time how genetic knowledge about the inheritance of cancer can be utilized jointly with data about the expression of genes in cancer samples to model deregulated microRNAs and their functions at multiple scales of biology. Our approach further uncovers previously unknown connections between microRNAs, their regulated genes, and their dynamics. Using head and neck cancer as a model, we predict the presence, functions, and gene targets of a new tumor suppressor microRNA in a cancer-associated chromosomal region where a candidate gene has not been identified. We then confirm their validity with extensive and thorough biological characterization and show attenuation of lung metastasis in mice. The discovery of molecular networks regulated by microRNAs could be exploited for the design of new treatments as an alternative to the single-gene target paradigm.

With mounting availability of genomic and phenotypic databases, data integration and mining become increasingly challenging. While efforts have been put forward to analyze prokaryotic phenotypes, current computational technologies either lack high throughput capacity for genomic scale analysis, or are limited in their capability to integrate and mine data across different scales of biology. Consequently, simultaneous analysis of associations among genomes, phenotypes, and gene functions is prohibited. Here, we developed a high throughput computational approach, and demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of integrating large quantities of prokaryotic phenotypes along with genomic datasets for mining across multiple scales of biology (protein domains, pathways, molecular functions, and cellular processes). Applying this method over 59 fully sequenced prokaryotic species, we identified genetic basis and molecular mechanisms underlying the phenotypes in bacteria. We identified 3,711 significant correlations between 1,499 distinct Pfam and 63 phenotypes, with 2,650 correlations and 1,061 anti-correlations. Manual evaluation of a random sample of these significant correlations showed a minimal precision of 30% (95% confidence interval: 20%–42%; n = 50). We stratified the most significant 478 predictions and subjected 100 to manual evaluation, of which 60 were corroborated in the literature. We furthermore unveiled 10 significant correlations between phenotypes and KEGG pathways, eight of which were corroborated in the evaluation, and 309 significant correlations between phenotypes and 166 GO concepts evaluated using a random sample (minimal precision = 72%; 95% confidence interval: 60%–80%; n = 50). Additionally, we conducted a novel large-scale phenomic visualization analysis to provide insight into the modular nature of common molecular mechanisms spanning multiple biological scales and reused by related phenotypes (metaphenotypes). We propose that this method elucidates which classes of molecular mechanisms are associated with phenotypes or metaphenotypes and holds promise in facilitating a computable systems biology approach to genomic and biomedical research., Synopsis A key challenge of the post-genomic era is to conceive large-scale studies of genomes and observable characteristics of organisms (phenotypes) and to interpret the data thus produced. The goal of this “phenomic” study is to improve our understanding of complex biological systems in terms of their molecular underpinnings. In this paper, Liu and colleagues present comprehensive computational and novel visualization methods for discovering biological knowledge spanning multiple scales of biology. The authors were able to predict and visualize new knowledge between clusters of microbiological phenotypes and their molecular mechanisms. To their knowledge, this is the first time this has been done. More specifically, the method integrates microbiological data with genomic-scale data from protein family databases, gene ontology, and biological pathways. Conducted over 59 fully sequenced bacteria, and including significantly more phenotypes than previous studies of its kind, this study enables a “systems biology” view across different classifications of genes and processes. This represents advancement over previous techniques, which are either limited in biological scale or analytical breadth. Visualization of the networks generated by this technique shows the common biological modules shared by related phenotypes. The results of this experiment demonstrate that the fusion of clinical data with genomic information is able to elucidate, in high throughput, a massive number of biological processes underlying phenotypes.