Background: Genes show different sensitivities in expression corresponding to various biological conditions. Systematical study of this concept is required because of its important implications in microarray analysis etc. Ohn J.H. et al first studied this gene property with yeast transcriptional profiling data.Results: Here we propose a calculation framework for gene expression sensitivity analysis. We also compared the functions, centralities and transcriptional regulations of the sensitive and robust genes. We found that the robust genes tended to be involved in essential cellular processes. Oppositely, the sensitive genes perform their functions diversely. Moreover while genes from both groups show similar geometric centrality by coupling them onto integrated protein networks, the robust genes have higher vertex degree and betweenness than that of the sensitive genes. An interesting fact was also found that, not alike the sensitive genes, the robust genes shared less transcription factors as their regulators.Conclusions: Our study reveals different propensities of gene expression to external perturbations, demonstrates different roles of sensitive genes and robust genes in the cell and proposes the necessity of combining the gene expression sensitivity in the microarray analysis.
Pei Hao Siyuan Zheng Jie Ping Kang Tu Christian Giegers Rui Wang-Sattler Yang Zhong Yixue Li
Bioinformatics Center, Key Lab of Systems Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chin Bioinformatics Center, Key Lab of Systems Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chin Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology, 100 Qinzhou Road, Shanghai 200235, China College of l Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Healt School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China Bioinformatics Center, Key Lab of Systems Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chin