BACKGROUND Colon cancer is one of the common cancers in human. Although the number of annual cases has decreased drastically, prognostic screening and translational methods can be improved. Hence, it is critical to understand the molecular mechanisms of disease progression and prognosis. RESULTS In this study, we develop a new strategy for integrating microRNA and gene expression profiles together with clinical information toward understanding the regulation of colon cancer. Particularly, we use this approach to identify microRNA and gene expression networks that are specific to certain pathological stages. To demonstrate the application of our method, we apply this approach to identify microRNA and gene interactions that are specific to pathological stages of colon cancer in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) datasets. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that there are significant differences in network connections between miRNAs and genes in different pathological stages of colon cancer. These findings point to a hypothesis that these networks signify different roles of microRNA and gene regulation in the pathogenesis and tumorigenesis of colon cancer.

中文翻译：

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结肠癌不同病理阶段 microRNA 和基因相互作用的网络视图。

背景技术结肠癌是人类常见的癌症之一。尽管每年的病例数大幅减少，但预后筛查和转化方法仍可以改进。因此，了解疾病进展和预后的分子机制至关重要。结果在这项研究中，我们开发了一种新策略，将 microRNA 和基因表达谱与临床信息整合在一起，以了解结肠癌的调控。特别是，我们使用这种方法来识别特定于某些病理阶段的 microRNA 和基因表达网络。为了证明我们的方法的应用，我们应用这种方法来识别癌症基因组图谱 (TCGA) 数据集中结肠癌病理阶段特有的 microRNA 和基因相互作用。结论我们的结果表明，结肠癌不同病理阶段的miRNA和基因之间的网络连接存在显着差异。这些发现提出了一个假设，即这些网络表示 microRNA 和基因调控在结肠癌的发病机制和肿瘤发生中的不同作用。