Figure 4

Asymmetries for Cell Communication and Cell Adhesion. Of the biological evidence of breast cancer examined in this study, three cases showed asymmetries in biological processes that are similar to those observed in the WGAS ranks. Three cases showed similar asymmetries for Cell Adhesion: 1/ top panel, differential expression between normal breast tissues and tumors measured using the t-statistic, as a result of which genes involved in Cell Adhesion are over-represented at the bottom, which indicates that they are generally under-expressed in tumors, while Cell Communication is under-represented at the top (note that both patterns follow the same direction); 2/ middle panel, association between age at diagnosis and gene expression levels measured using the coefficient from the linear model, so coefficients < 0 indicate association with early age at diagnosis, which is consistent with the expected contribution of genetic effects to breast cancer risk [57]; 3/ bottom panel, fold change in gene expression changes between BRCA1-depleted and control-treated MCF10A cells, which indicates possible molecular and/or functional dependencies on processes linked to breast cancer risk [57]. Differences in annotation percentages between top and bottom range from -8% to -4% for the most significant partition at the bottom end. On the basis of these results, all three ranks were inverted and combined for comparison with the WGAS results.