Tumor Associated Gene (TAG)

The completion of human genome sequences allows one to rapidly identify and analyze genes of interest through the use of computational approach. The available annotations including physical characterization and functional domains of known tumor-related genes thus can be used to study the role of genes involved in carcinogenesis. The tumor-associated gene (Tumor Associated Gene was designed to utilize information from well-characterized oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes to facilitate cancer research. All target genes were identified through text-mining approach from the PubMed database. A semi-automatic information retrieving engine was built to collect specific information of these target genes from various resources and store in the TAG database. At current stage, 662 TAGs including 246 oncogenes, 265 tumor suppressor genes, and 151 genes related to oncogenesis were collected. Information collected in TAG database can be browsed through user-friendly web interfaces that provide searching genes by chromosome or by keywords. The “consensus domain analysis” tool functions to identify conserved protein domains and GO terms among selected TAG genes. In addition, the “oncogenic domain analysis” can analyze oncogenic potential of any user-provided protein based on a weighed term frequency table calculated from the TAG proteins. This study was supported by grant from National research program for genomic medicine (NRPGM) and personnel from Bioinformatics Center of Center for Biotechnology and Biosciences in the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.