Gene ontology to explore functions of DEGs detected in breast cancer cell response to soy isoflavones

Disparities in breast cancer incidence between Asian and Western countries have long been noted. A possiblecontributor to this difference may be the consumption of soy products because higher soy intake among Asianpopulations has been associated with a lower risk of breast cancer. However, the effect of isoflavones onbreast cancer risk is controversial. Many studies have reported that a diet high in isoflavones decreases therisk of breast cancer, while other studies (e.g. in vitro and animal studies) suggest that isoflavones are notstatistically significantly associated with breast cancer risk. The abundant available transcriptome data offeran excellent opportunity to investigate the mechanism-specific effects of isoflavones on cancer cells. A metaanalysisis a robust strategy that leverages multiple datasets and provides reliable results and informationthrough larger sample sizes and thus more statistical power. For the first time, we performed a large-scalemeta-analysis using ۲۸۳ microarray samples from ۷ different experiments. In addition, we used GO andpathway enrichment analyses, which are differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in breast cancer cell responseto isoflavones. The result of biological process enrichment analysis of the up-regulated genes revealed thatthe terms associated with cell division, mitotic nuclear division, and viral processes were significantlyoverrepresented. These findings also suggest that isoflavones may influence cell growth through modulatingsignaling pathways. The terms telomere maintenance via recombination was also found to be significant. Inaddition, down-regulated genes revealed a number of terms related to protein transport and the negativeregulation of cell proliferation. Moreover, the dominant categories of molecular functions were proteinbinding and ATP binding for the up-regulated genes. In the category of cellular components, the nucleus andcytoplasm were the most significantly represented groups for up-regulated and down-regulated genes,respectively.

کلیدواژه ها:

Breast cancer ، Isoflavones ، Gene ontology ، Meta-analysis