Journal of Carcinogenesis & Mutagenesis

Abstract

Mucin Family Genes are Downregulated in Colorectal Cancer Patients

Mohammad Azhar Aziz, Majed AlOtaibi, Abdulkareem AlAbdulrahman, Mohammed AlDrees and Ibrahim AlAbdulkarim

Mucins are very well known to be associated with different types of cancer. Their role in colorectal cancer has been extensively studied without direct correlation with their change in expression levels. In the present study we employed the human exon array from Affymetrix to provide evidence that mucin family genes are downregulated in colorectal cancer tumor samples. We analyzed 92 samples taken from normal and tumor tissues. All mucin family genes except MUCL1 were downregulated with the fold change value ranging from -3.53 to 1.78 as calculated using AltAnalyze software. Maximum drop in RNA transcripts were observed for MUC2 with a fold change of -3.53. Further, we carried out Integromics analysis to analyze mucin genes using hierarchical clustering. MUC1 and MUC4 were found to be potential biomarkers for human colorectal cancer. Top upstream regulators were identified for mucin genes. Network analyses were carried out to further our understanding about potential mechanisms by which mucins can be involved in causing colorectal cancer.