Human housekeeping genes interrogated with Gini-index and GTEx datasets

Housekeeping genes are stably expressed genes that are essential for molecular and systems biology studies. We used Gini index profiles to discover housekeeping genes in human subjects, in addition to major tissue subtypes. We investigated tissue-specific housekeeping genes using GTEx datasets from over 16,000 normal tissue samples. As a result, we identified 529 housekeeping genes that are conserved across 27 major organs. The expression variations of these housekeeping genes were then compared between male and female participants for further sexual dimorphism studies. This research suggests alternate sets of human housekeeping protein-coding genes that exhibit more consistent expression profiles.