| Essential genes are indispensable in organisms and their functions involve many key biological processes of life.The identification and functional study of essential genes in various species is not only important for understanding the nature of life,but also has important application value in synthetic biology and other aspects.In recent years,with the advancement of experimental technology,human essential genes(HEG)have been systematically revealed,triggering a series of related biological and medical issues.What is the nature of gene essentiality? What is the basis of the genomic structure it depends on? What are the evolutionary changes of essential genes in different species? What are the developmental changes of essential genes in human development? What are the indications of essential genes for human diseases,especially cancer research? In fact,genes essentiality is an extremely complex problem.It must be systematically studied from the perspective of systems biology integrating genomics,epigenetics,and proteomics.Based on the latest multi-omics data,this study systematically investigated the genetic and regulatory characteristics of HEG and elucidated the main characteristics of essential genes from the three aspects of genome structure,epigenetic modification,and protein network.From the chromatin structure point of view,essential genes are more likely to be located in the chromatin structure scaffold and therefore play a key role in the entire genome and chromatin structure.In terms of epigenetic modifications,the chromatin near the essential gene is more active and binds more active histones and transcription factors.The chromatin near essential genes has regulation that is more active in gene expression and thus plays an important role in the cell function and the continuation of life.In protein-protein interaction networks,essential genes are the hub in the protein-protein interaction network.They have the greatest impact on the entire protein network and play an indispensable role in the cell function.Through comparative analysis of essential genes among different species,it is possible to elucidate how essential genes are constantly changing in evolution.This study found that gene essentiality is not a fixed property for a gene,but it is constantly changing in evolution.However,through multi-species evolutionary analysis,it has been found that essential genes perform similar core functions in different species.Further comparative analysis of different stages in early embryonic development reveals the dynamic expression process of essential genes during development.Their dynamic changes are closely related to epigenetic regulation at different stages of early embryonic development.The expression of essential genes changes significantly during development,and it can be used to distinguish cell types during development.In order to explore the relationship between essential genes and tumors,this study systematically collected and evaluated biological information resources for TCGA cancer data.According to the association analysis of TCGA data and HEG,HEG can distinguish tumor tissue from normal tissue,and provide important clues for screening potential tumor markers.Finally,in order to facilitate the analysis of HEG by other researchers,an on-line computational analysis software(HEGIAP)(http://sysomics.com/HEGIAP/)was developed.The platform integrates a wealth of relevant data resources and analysis tools to provide services such as single gene search/analysis,multi-gene search/analysis and comparative analysis.It can support systemic and multidimensional exploration of gene essentiality. |
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