University of Electronic Sciences and Technology of China, Chengdu, People Republic of China.
Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics, Havana, Cuba.
PLoS One. 2023 Feb 21;18(2):e0277786. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277786. eCollection 2023.
Kauffman picture of normal and tumor states as attractors in an abstract state space is used in order to interpret gene expression data for 15 cancer localizations obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas. A principal component analysis of this data unveils the following qualitative aspects about tumors: 1) The state of a tissue in gene expression space can be described by a few variables. In particular, there is a single variable describing the progression from a normal tissue to a tumor. 2) Each cancer localization is characterized by a gene expression profile, in which genes have specific weights in the definition of the cancer state. There are no less than 2500 differentially-expressed genes, which lead to power-like tails in the expression distribution functions. 3) Tumors in different localizations share hundreds or even thousands of differentially expressed genes. There are 6 genes common to the 15 studied tumor localizations. 4) The tumor region is a kind of attractor. Tumors in advanced stages converge to this region independently of patient age or genetic characteristics. 5) There is a landscape of cancer in gene expression space with an approximate border separating normal tissues from tumors.
考夫曼（Kauffman）将正常和肿瘤状态描绘为抽象状态空间中的吸引子，用于解释从癌症基因组图谱（The Cancer Genome Atlas）获得的 15 种癌症定位的基因表达数据。对该数据进行主成分分析，揭示了肿瘤的以下定性方面：1）组织在基因表达空间中的状态可以用几个变量来描述。特别是，存在一个描述从正常组织向肿瘤发展的单一变量。2）每个癌症定位都具有特定的基因表达谱，其中基因在癌症状态的定义中有特定的权重。在表达分布函数中，至少有 2500 个差异表达基因，导致幂律尾部。3）不同定位的肿瘤共享数百甚至数千个差异表达基因。在研究的 15 种肿瘤定位中，有 6 个基因是共同的。4）肿瘤区域是一种吸引子。无论患者年龄或遗传特征如何，晚期肿瘤都会独立地向该区域收敛。5）在基因表达空间中存在癌症景观，大致边界将正常组织与肿瘤分开。
