Assembly of a parts list of the human mitotic cell cycle machinery

Abstract

The set of proteins required for mitotic division remains poorly characterized. Here, an extensive series of correlation analyses of human and mouse transcriptomics data were performed to identify genes strongly and reproducibly associated with cells undergoing S/G2-M phases of the cell cycle. In so doing, 701 cell cycle-associated genes were defined and while it was shown that many are only expressed during these phases, the expression of others is also driven by alternative promoters. Of this list, 496 genes have known cell cycle functions, whereas 205 were assigned as putative cell cycle genes, 53 of which are functionally uncharacterized. Among these, 27 were screened for subcellular localization revealing many to be nuclear localized and at least three to be novel centrosomal proteins. Furthermore, 10 others inhibited cell proliferation upon siRNA knockdown. This study presents the first comprehensive list of human cell cycle proteins, identifying many new candidate proteins.

Keywords: cell cycle; gene expression; network analysis; systems biology; transcriptome.