in silico evidence of signaling pathways of notch mediated networks in leukemia

Notch signaling plays a critical role in cell fate determination and maintenance of progenitors in many developmental systems. Notch receptors have been shown to be expressed on hematopoietic progenitor cells as well as to various degrees in peripheral blood T and B lymphocytes, monocytes, and neutrophils. Our aim was to understand the protein interaction network, using Notch1 protein name as query in STRING database and we generated a model to assess the significance of Notch1 associated proteins in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). We further analyzed the expression levels of the genes encoding hub proteins, using Oncomine database, to determine their significance in leukemogenesis. Of the forty two hub genes, we observed that sixteen genes were underexpressed and eleven genes were overexpressed in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic samples in comparison to their expression levels in normal cells. Of these, we found three novel genes which have not been reported earlier- KAT2B, PSEN1 (underexpressed) and CDH2 (overexpressed). These three identified genes may provide new insights into the abnormal hematopoietic process observed in Leukemia as these genes are involved in Notch signaling and cell adhesion processes. It is evident that experimental validation of the protein interactors in leukemic cells could help in the identification of new diagnostic markers for leukemia.