Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: Correlation between mRNA expression and DNA methylation
Maintained by Richard Park (Boston University/Harvard Medical School)
Overview
Introduction

The role of general epigenetic mechanisms in carcinogenesis and tumor aggressiveness is well documented: CpG island hyper-methylation silences tumor suppressor genes, whereas hypo-methylation promotes the transcriptional activation of oncogenes and induces chromosomal instability. This pipeline calculates and identifies correlations between DNA methylation and gene expression profiles using the available array technologies.

Summary

The top 25 correlated methylation probes per gene are displayed. Total number of matched samples = 286. Number of gene expression samples = 286. Number of methylation samples = 286.

Results
Correlation Histogram

Figure 1.  Histogram of methylation correlation values. n is the number of matched samples between Level 3 CpG site methylation and Level 3 gene expression arrays. Number of Matched Samples = 286

Qvalue Summary Plots

Figure 2.  Plot 1. The estimated pi_0 versus the tuning parameter lambda. Plot 2. The q-values versus the p-values. Plot 3. The number of significant tests versus each q-value cutoff. Plot 4. The number of expected false positives versus the number of significant tests.The first is a plot of the estimate of pi_0 versus its tuning parameter lambda. In most cases, as lambda gets larger, the bias of the estimate decreases, yet the variance increases. Comparing your estimate of pi_0 to this plot allows one to guage its quality. The remaining three plots show how many tests are significant, as well as how many false positives to expect for each q-value cut-off.

Negative Correlation between Methylation and Gene Expression

Table 1.  Get Full Table Top 25 most negatively correlated methylation probes. Correlation Coefficient: See Methods & Data below. Pval and Qval: P- and Q-values of the correlation coefficient. Expression Mean: mean detection level of gene expression probes. Methylation Mean: mean detection level of CpG methylation probes.

Meth_Probe Gene Chrom Position Corr_Coeff Pval Qval Expr_Mean Meth_Mean
cg12889195 LOC654433 2 113709314 -0.9 0 0 7.247 0.67681
cg12258179 RASIP1 19 53923999 -0.85 0 0 8.380 0.65251
cg12889195 PAX8 2 113709314 -0.85 0 0 5.850 0.67681
cg02423817 PTPRCAP 11 66960237 -0.85 0 0 7.292 0.70112
cg05991820 ECHDC3 10 11825167 -0.82 0 0 6.318 0.58504
cg06797068 DDX43 6 74161321 -0.82 0 0 NA 0.76348
cg00292135 C7orf13 7 156125829 -0.82 0 0 5.882 0.27309
cg24040502 NLRP2 19 60169622 -0.82 0 0 6.192 0.71060
cg23570874 LOC339535 1 236716049 -0.82 0 0 NA 0.79365
cg07032359 LOC84740 4 7806706 -0.82 0 0 5.673 0.76593
cg07590529 TBX18 6 85528692 -0.81 0 0 NA 0.54081
cg05363903 IQCA1 2 237080638 -0.81 0 0 5.650 0.52533
cg23659134 GSTO2 10 106025158 -0.81 0 0 6.540 0.57864
cg01070987 PFN2 3 151169692 -0.81 0 0 11.071 0.49692
cg12557114 WISP3 6 112482563 -0.8 0 0 NA 0.74506
cg10088332 GTSF1 12 53153696 -0.8 0 0 NA 0.83498
cg05890620 ICAM4 19 10258612 -0.79 1.7e-62 1.3e-62 4.556 0.39972
cg02416424 KRT19 17 36938351 -0.79 0 0 NA 0.34286
cg14732998 ZNF793 19 42689671 -0.78 0 0 NA 0.31781
cg14299940 PHYHD1 9 130724744 -0.78 0 0 5.848 0.38582
cg26314750 C15orf56 15 38333086 -0.78 9.3e-51 6.8e-51 NA 0.53379
cg17286244 SPESP1 15 67009646 -0.78 0 0 NA 0.61560
cg01328500 IQCG 3 199124189 -0.78 0 0 8.311 0.61623
cg23027296 GJB7 6 88095750 -0.78 0 0 NA 0.61240
cg04449108 UGT1A6 2 234265993 -0.78 0 0 NA 0.80376
cg03555227 RANBP17 5 170221648 -0.77 0 0 NA 0.49517
Methods & Data
Input

Methylation Array Platforms: Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27, Illumina DNA Methylation OMA002, Illumina DNA Methylation OMA003

  • methylation file = /xchip/cga/gdac-prod/tcga-gdac/jobResults/GDAC_MethylationPreprocess/HNSC/1841475/0.GDAC_MethylationPreprocess.Finished/HNSC.meth.for_correlation.filtered_data.txt

Gene Expression Platforms: Agilent 244K Gene Expression G4502A-07-1, Agilent 244K Gene Expression G4502A-07-2, Agilent 244K Gene Expression G4502A-07-3, Affymetrix Human Exon 1.0 ST Array, Affymetrix HT Human Genome U133 Array

  • gene expression file = /xchip/cga/gdac-prod/tcga-gdac/jobResults/mRNAseq_preprocessor/HNSC/1768764/0.mRNAseq_preprocessor.Finished/HNSC.uncv2.mRNAseq_RSEM_normalized_log2.txt

Correlation Coefficient

Level 3 methylation and gene expression arrays were paired on the basis of Entrez Gene ID concordance. The association between CpG site methylation and the level of expression of the corresponding genes was determined by calculating a correlation measure between the two platforms.

  • correlation measure = Spearman

Download Results

This is an experimental feature. The full results of the analysis summarized in this report can be downloaded from the TCGA Data Coordination Center.