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Title

 

 

 

 

 

Relationship between human oral lichen planus and oral squamous cell carcinoma at a genomic level: a data-mining study

 

Authors

 

Luca Giacomelli1, Oluwadayo Oluwadara2, Giacomo Chiappe1 Antonio Barone1, Francesco Chiappelli2*, Ugo Covani1

 

Affiliation

 

1Tirrenian Stomatologic Institute, Via Aurelia 335, Lido di Camaiore (Lucca), Italy; 2UCLA School of Dentistry, Division of Oral Biology and Medicine

 

Email

 

FChiappelli@dentistry.ucla.edu

Article Type

 

Hypothesis

Date

 

Received November 25, 2009; Accepted December 15, 2009; Published December 31, 2009

 

Abstract

The leader gene approach is a data mining method based on the systematic search for genes involved in a specific process and their ranking according to the number of interconnections with the other genes identified. The genes with the strongest interconnections are termed leader genes, since they may be supposed to play an important role in the process. The potential of malignant progression of OLP to oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is still not completely clear. In this study, the leader gene approach is applied to investigate the association between OLP and OSCC at a molecular level. Results were integrated with those obtained in an experimental analysis (see paper 1 of this series). Genes involved in OLP and OSCC were identified by systematic queries to dedicated databases. Interconnections among identified genes were calculated and given a confidence value using STRING database. Leader genes were identified by clustering genes according to their interconnections. This theoretical analysis shows that OLP and OSCC share two leader genes: TP53 and CDKN1A, involved in the PI3K signalling events mediated by AKT pathway. This finding and those obtained in the experimental analysis suggest the possible involvement of some key genes/proteins LCK, PIK3CA, BIRC5, TP53 and CDKN1A in the malignant progression from OLP to OSCC. Moreover, these findings support the role of some molecular pathways, namely IL2 signalling events mediated by PI3K, PI3K signalling events mediated by AKT, and, possibly, Aurora A signalling in the association between OLP and OSCC.

 

Keywords

computational biology; gene interactions; genomics; oral lichen planus; oral carcinoma.

 

Citation

 

Giacomelli et al., Bioinformation 4(6): 258-262 (2009)

Edited by

 

P. Kangueane

 

ISSN

 

0973-2063

 

Publisher

 

Biomedical Informatics

 

License

 

 

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.