Context: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a kidney cancer that originates in renal parenchyma and it is the most common type of kidney cancer with approximately 80% lethal cases.
Aims: To interpret the mechanism, explore the regulation of TF-target genes and TF-pathway, and identify the potential key genes of renal cell carcinoma.
Settings and design: After constructing a regulation network from differently expressed genes and transcription factors, pathway regulation network and gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis were made.
Materials and methods: The gene expression profile set GSE6344, a renal cell carcinoma sample set, was collected from NCBI, pathway data from KEGG, and regulationship data from database TRANSFAC and TRED.
Statistical analysis used: Besides different expressed genes obtained by limma, impact analysis method and GO enrichment were applied to find the significant expressed pathways.
Results: Finally, we constructed a TF-target gene and TF-pathway regulation network of renal cell carcinoma. And some genes proved to be highly related to renal cell carcinoma were identified.
Conclusions: This study illustrated that by incorporating significantly expressed pathway into a regulation network based analysis, one can derive greater insights into the underlying mechanisms of renal cell carcinoma.