To determine if the PTEN mRNA downregulation in tumors relative to normal was also present in patient samples, we used Nanostring digital barcoding technology to measure PTEN expression in normal and tumor breast biopsy samples (four normal samples, four normal–tumor pairs) using multiple different probes, and determined that PTEN levels are decreased in tumor compared to normal samples (Supplementary Fig. 1b, Supplementary Data 1, Supplementary Table 2). Here, PTEN is linked to neoplasm.