GO:0030101Ontology (GO BP)GO biological process · ~100 member genes
Q-omics provides the Natural killer cell activation (GO:0030101) pathway profile, scoring each patient from the combined activity of its roughly 100 member genes. Pathway activity is associated with patient survival in 23 of 34 cancer types, with the highest sampling consensus in KIRP. Among the 18 cancer types available for tumor–normal comparison, the pathway is differentially active in 12, with the highest sampling consensus in KICH. Additionally, pathway RNA activity shows 35,933 significant cross-omics associations, again with the highest sampling consensus in STAD. Together, these results highlight KIRP, KICH, and STAD as cancer lineages where the pathway shows reproducible signals across outcome, tissue activity, and molecular association analyses.
Every result is evaluated using two consensus scores. Sampling consensus measures how consistently a finding is reproduced within a cancer lineage across different conditions. Lineage consensus measures how broadly the result is shared across cancer types, distinguishing pan-cancer signals from lineage-specific patterns. Pathway-against-pathway and pathway-against-mutation comparisons are not available for ontology entities.
Survival associations
This table summarizes Natural killer cell activation survival associations by molecular data type. RNA-level pathway activity shows survival associations in the most cancer types (23). The rightmost column indicates the cancer type with the highest sampling consensus for each layer.
This table ranks reproducible pathway activity–survival associations across cancer types. High Natural killer cell activation activity shows favorable associations in HNSC, SKCM, CESC and LUAD, but unfavorable associations in KIRP and ACC. In the KIRP Kaplan–Meier curve the high-activity group declines faster, consistent with the unfavorable association (log-rank p < 0.001). KIRP ranks highest by sampling consensus for Natural killer cell activation.
This table summarizes Natural killer cell activation tumor–normal activity differences by data type. RNA-level activity shows significant tumor–normal differences in 12 cancer types, while mass-spec protein activity shows differences in 5. The strongest signals are in KICH for RNA and COAD for protein.
This table ranks reproducible tumor–normal activity differences for the pathway. A positive fold-change indicates higher activity in tumor tissue. The pathway shows higher tumor activity across KIRC and STAD and lower tumor activity in KICH, KIRP, COAD and LUAD. In the KICH box plot, normal samples show higher pathway activity than tumor samples (log2 FC = −0.043, t-test p < 0.001).
This table shows molecular features associated with Natural killer cell activation pathway activity in patient tissues and cancer cell lines. In patient samples, pathway activity is most strongly linked to RNA and protein features, with the largest associated set in STAD. In cancer cell lines, RNA-expression features and functional dependencies dominate, with the largest set in PANCREAS.
