Transcriptomic analyses of Myc-induced zebrafish liver cancer

To study the characteristics and mechanisms of Myc-induced zebrafish liver tumor, next-generation sequencing-based SAGE analyses were used to examine the transcriptomes of tumor and control samples. The results indicated that ribosome proteins were overwhelmingly up-regulated in the Myc-induced liver tumors. Cross-species analyses showed that the zebrafish Myc model correlated well with Myc transgenic mouse models for liver cancers. The Myc-induced zebrafish liver tumors also possessed molecular signatures highly similar to human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Thus, our zebrafish model demonstrated the conserved role of Myc in promoting hepatocarcinogenesis in all vertebrate species. Overall design: Transcriptome profiling of tumor samples (M+D+) and control samples (M-D-, M+D-, M-D+) were generated by deep sequencing, each in duplicates, using 3' RNA-SAGE on the SOLiD system.