User Help Pages
  • Welcome to the Help Pages for UCSC Xena
  • Tutorials and webinars
    • Webinars
    • Basic Tutorial: Section 1
    • Basic Tutorial: Section 2
    • Basic Tutorial: Section 3
    • Advanced Tutorial: Section 1
    • Advanced Tutorial: Section 2
    • Tutorial: Tumor vs Normal
    • Tutorial: Viewing your own data
    • Live examples
  • How do I ...
    • How do I make a KM plot?
    • How do I compare tumor vs normal expression?
    • How do I remove null data (gray lines) from view?
    • How do I make subgroups?
    • How do I make more than 2 subgroups?
    • How do I make subgroups with geneA high and geneB high?
    • How do I compare gene expression between subgroups?
    • How do I compare gene expression between different cancer types?
    • How do I remove duplicate samples from a KM plot?
    • How do I view multiple types of cancer together?
    • How do I filter to just one cancer type
    • How do I view my data with the data from TCGA?
    • How do I change the color of a column?
    • How do I interact with the tooltip?
    • How do I cite UCSC Xena?
  • Overview of features
    • Visual Spreadsheet
      • Coloring for Mutation Columns
      • Coloring for Segmented Copy Number Columns
    • Kaplan Meier Plots
    • Chart & Statistics View
    • Filtering and subgrouping
      • Supported search terms for finding samples
    • Differential Gene Expression
    • GSEA
    • Genomic Signatures
    • Bookmarks
    • Download Data
    • Xena Single Cell
    • TumorMap
    • MuPIT
    • Accessing data through python
    • Transcript View
    • Xena Gene Set Viewer
  • Overview of public data
    • Types of data we have
    • TCGA
    • GDC
    • More studies
    • Choosing a study/cohort
  • FAQ
    • Xena Browser
    • Data and datasets
  • Viewing your own data
    • Getting Started
    • Probes/transcripts/identifiers we recognize
    • Data format specifications and supported biological data types
    • KM plots using data from a Local Xena Hub
    • Hubs for institutions, collaborations, labs, and larger projects
    • Loading data from the command line
    • FAQ/Troubleshooting Guide
  • Technical documentation
    • Setting up Xena for your institution
    • Deep Linking Into Xena
    • Metadata Specification
  • Contact us
  • Cite us
  • Data Use Agreement
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Description
  • Prerequisites
  • Estimated time needed
  • Learning goals
  • Tutorial
  • Part A
  • Part B
  • Test your knowledge

Was this helpful?

Export as PDF
  1. Tutorials and webinars

Tutorial: Tumor vs Normal

Learn how to compare tumor samples to normal samples using our TCGA TARGET GTEx study

Last updated 1 day ago

Was this helpful?

Description

This tutorial is made for those who have basic knowledge of how to use Xena. We will cover how to view tumor and normal samples from healthy and diseased individuals together, and how to compare gene expression for one or more genes between tumor and normal samples.

We will be using both GTEx samples as our normal samples as well as TCGA matched normal samples. More information on GTEx normal samples can be found here:

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes basic knowledge of how to build and read a . To get this, go through .

Estimated time needed

Part A: 10 min

Part B: 5 min

Learning goals

Part A

  • Build a visual spreadsheet with the columns primary site, sample type, study, and gene expression for the TCGA TARGET GTEx study.

  • Filter to just colon samples.

Part B

  • Create a box plot using the Charts and Statistics View

Tutorial

We will compare MYC gene expression between patient's samples in TCGA colon adenocarcinoma tumor samples and individuals normal colon tissue in GTEx.

Part A

Our goal is to build a visual spreadsheet with the columns 'primary site', 'sample site', 'study', and gene expression for MYC for the TCGA TARGET GTEx study. We will then filter to samples in the colon.

We can now see that normal samples tend to have lower MYC gene expression.

Steps

  1. Type 'TCGA TARGET GTEx', select this study from the drop down menu, and click 'To first variable'.

  2. Type 'MYC', select the checkbox for Gene Expression and click 'To second variable'.

  3. Choose 'Phenotypic' and select the checkboxes for 'sample type', 'study' and 'Primary site', and click 'Done'.

  4. Type 'colon' in the samples search bar and choose 'Keep samples'.

Video of steps 1-4

Video of step 5

Part B

Our goal is to see if the difference in gene expression, where normal samples tend to have lower MYC gene expression, is statistically significant.

We can now see that patient's tumor samples, both recurrent, primary, and metastatic, have higher expression compared to normal tissue, both patient's matched normal tissue from TCGA and unmatched individual's normal tissue from GTEx.

Steps

  1. Click the column menu for column B (MYC gene expression) and choose 'Charts & Stats'

  2. Click 'Compare subgroups', click the dropdown for 'Show data from' and choose 'column B: MYC - gene expression RNAseq - RSEM norm_count' if it is not already selected

  3. Click the dropdown for 'Subgroup samples by' and choose 'column C: Sample Type'.

  4. Leave the chart type as 'box plot', and click 'Done'.

Video of steps 1-4

Test your knowledge

Compare EGFR gene expression between patient's tumor samples and individual's normal lung tissue.

Start at our home page and click on 'Launch Xena'. You are now in our Visual Spreadsheet Wizard.

How do I compare tumor vs normal expression?
Visual Spreadsheet
Basic Tutorial: Section 1
Ending Screenshot
http://xena.ucsc.edu/
Ending Screenshot
Ending Screenshot