Analysis of susceptible genes and chromosome loci for lung cancers by automated gene prediction tools and genome scanning meta-analysis

Genome-wide scanning of susceptible loci and genes for medical diseases is important in current post-genome era. To date, a variety of studies have been focused on the experimental validation or genome-wide linkage scans across multiple populations hunting for susceptibility genes in lung cancer. In the present study, we used two gene prediction tools (PROSPECTR and SUSPECTS, Gen Wanderer) to analyze eight previously identified susceptibility loci for lung tumors, which are selected from literature searching. Our results showed that there was a subset of 26 likely candidate susceptible genes related to lung cancer in each chromosomal region. For potential susceptible chromosome loci, the genome-wide scanning meta-analysis using bins of 60 cM width predicted a group of potential regions associated with lung cancer. Locus 15q21-26 (P=0.000606) is strongly evidenced, which has been confirmed in previous work. In contrast, another potential locus 10q11.2-q23.3 (P=0.0435223) is suggestively evidenced, which was never identified before. Ac compared to previous known regions, the latter one is the new detected one in our study. In conclusion, our study may be useful to contribute to further experimental tests of susceptibility genes/loci related to lung cancer.