Figure 1. Correlations between mRNA and protein abundance in TCGA tumors.
mRNA and protein were correlated across all the samples, resulting in 90.6% positive correlations, and 79.4% were significantly correlated (Benjamini-Hochberg adjusted p value <0.01), with a mean Spearman’s correlation of 0.38 and a median value of 0.45 (top panel). Different biological pathways and processes showed significantly different levels of correlation (bottom panel). Metabolic pathways and the interferon response displayed high mRNA-protein correlation, and ribosome, mRNA splicing, oxidative phosphorylation, and complement and coagulation cascade were poorly correlated. The mean correlation is shown in parentheses followed by Benjamini-Hochberg adjusted p values calculated using a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test following the functional group names from MSIGDB. Blue bars indicate positive correlations and yellow indicates negative correlations; individual proteins (represented as bars on the x-axis) are sorted by correlation from low to high (bottom panel).
