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Yashar WM, Estabrook J, Holly HD, Somers J, Nikolova O, Babur Ö, Braun TP, Demir E. Predicting transcription factor activity using prior biological information. iScience 2024; 27:109124. [PMID: 38455978 PMCID: PMC10918219 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109124] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2023] [Revised: 10/20/2023] [Accepted: 01/31/2024] [Indexed: 03/09/2024] Open
Abstract
Dysregulation of normal transcription factor activity is a common driver of disease. Therefore, the detection of aberrant transcription factor activity is important to understand disease pathogenesis. We have developed Priori, a method to predict transcription factor activity from RNA sequencing data. Priori has two key advantages over existing methods. First, Priori utilizes literature-supported regulatory information to identify transcription factor-target gene relationships. It then applies linear models to determine the impact of transcription factor regulation on the expression of its target genes. Second, results from a third-party benchmarking pipeline reveals that Priori detects aberrant activity from 124 single-gene perturbation experiments with higher sensitivity and specificity than 11 other methods. We applied Priori and other top-performing methods to predict transcription factor activity from two large primary patient datasets. Our work demonstrates that Priori uniquely discovered significant determinants of survival in breast cancer and identified mediators of drug response in leukemia.
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Affiliation(s)
- William M. Yashar
- Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Division of Oncologic Sciences, Department of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Joseph Estabrook
- Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health and Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Hannah D. Holly
- Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health and Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Julia Somers
- Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health and Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Olga Nikolova
- Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Division of Oncologic Sciences, Department of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Özgün Babur
- Computer Science Department, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA
| | - Theodore P. Braun
- Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Division of Oncologic Sciences, Department of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Division of Hematology & Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Emek Demir
- Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Division of Oncologic Sciences, Department of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health and Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239, USA
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, Richland, WA 99354, USA
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