Comprehensive identification of survival-associated genes for cancers

Prognostic signature is important in estimating cancer risk, subtyping cancer, and planning treatment. A single gene as a prognostic marker would facilitate the development of a clinical test. Here we showed that the number of prognostic and diagnostic genes differ greatly across cancers. By considering both the survival difference and the fold change of expression in cancer, we revealed the prognostic genes for each cancer and found twenty two genes with both diagnostic and prognostic capacity. The universal prognostic genes (CDC20, CDCA8, ASPM, ERCC6L, and GTSE1) mainly function in the spindle assembly checkpoint, and show more statistical links to mutated pathways, suggesting that expression of these genes can be altered by mutations from many pathways. Briefly, we systematically identified the prognostic genes and revealed the associations between the prognostic genes and genes mutated in cancer. Keywords: Prognostic gene; Cancer; Mutation; Diagnosis