The mutational interaction analysis indicated mutually exclusive patterns in EP300 to CDKN2A (OR = 0.58) and EP300 to NFE2L2 (OR = 0.34), which was unusual in view of the dominant co-occurring patterns for most gene-pairs (the inner part of Fig. 4c, Supplementary Fig. 5 and Supplementary Data 8), which collectively suggested its specific oncogenic functions in ESCC. Here, CDKN2A is linked to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.