TSGene: a web resource for tumor suppressor genes

Tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) are guardian genes that play important roles in controlling cell proliferation processes such as cell-cycle checkpoints and inducing apoptosis. Identification of these genes and understanding their functions are critical for further investigation of tumorigenesis. So far, many studies have identified numerous TSGs and illustrated their functions in various types of tumors or normal samples. Furthermore, accumulating evidence has shown that non-coding RNAs can act as TSGs to prevent the tumorigenesis processes. Therefore, there is a growing demand to integrate TSGs with large-scale experimental evidence (e.g. gene expression and epigenetic signatures) to provide a comprehensive resource for further investigation of TSGs and their molecular mechanisms in cancer. To achieve this goal, we first developed a comprehensive literature-based database called TSGene (tumor suppressor gene database), freely available at http://bioinfo.mc.vanderbilt.edu/TSGene/. In the current release, TSGene contains 716 human (637 protein-coding and 79 non-coding genes), 628 mouse and 567 rat TSGs curated from UniProtKB, the Tumor Associated Gene database and 5795 PubMed abstracts. Additionally, the TSGene provides detailed annotations for each TSG, such as cancer mutations, gene expressions, methylation sites, TF regulations and protein-protein interactions.