MNNG-Regulated Differentially Expressed Genes that Contribute to Cancer Development in Stomach Cells

Abstract

Cancer is a global health problem. There are diverse types of cancers, but there are several common pathways which lead to the development of cancer. Changes in gene expression might be the most common similarity found in almost all cancers. An understanding of the underlying changes in gene expression during cancer progression could lay a valuable foundation for the development of cancer therapeutics and even cancer vaccines. In this study, a well-known carcinogen, N-methyl-N’-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG), was employed to induce changes in gene expression in normal stomach cells. MNNG is known to cause cancer by inducing damage to DNA in MNNG-treated mammalian cells and animals fed with this carcinogen. An analysis was performed by comparing the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) caused by MNNG treatment with DEGs in stomach cancer cell lines. To this end, methods of analysis for functional categorization and protein-protein interaction networks, such as gene ontology (GO), the database for annotation, visualization, and integrated discovery (DAVID), Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomics (KEGG) and search tool for the retrieval of interacting genes/proteins (STRING), were used. As a result of these analyses, MNNG-regulated specific genes and interaction networks of their protein products that contributed to stomach cancer were identified. Copyright Ⓒ