Biological difference of m6A regulators in lung adenocarcinoma and lung squamous carcinoma
XIN Hua1, LIU Zhi2, ZHANG Jieli3
1. Department of Internal Medicine, China Fire And Rescue Institute Hospital, Beijing 102202, China; 2. Department of Neurosurgery, 3. Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Emergency General Hospital, Beijing 100028, China
Abstract:Objective To compare the biological difference of m6A regulators in lung adenocarcinoma(LUAD) and lung squamous carcinoma(LUSC). Methods The expression profiles of LUAD and LUSC were obtained from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and R was used to analyze the expression differences of 26 potential target genes of m6A regulators between LUAD and LUSC tumor tissues and normal tissues. The Cancer Proteome Atlas (TCPA) and Reverse phase protein array (RPPA) data were used to calculate the pathway activity scores (PAS) of the 26 m6Aregulators in 10 tumor-related pathways. Univariate COX analysis and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis were used to analyze the impact and difference of potential target genes of m6A regulators on prognosis of LUAD and LUSC patients. Results Among the 26 m6A regulators, the differences in the expression levels of ZCCHC4, ALKBH1 and YTHDF2 were statistically significant only in tumour and normal tissues in LUAD, and the differences in the expression levels of IGF2BP2 and YTHDC2 were statistically significant only in tumour and normal tissues in LUSC. In LUAD and LUSC, there were significant differences in the activity of the pathways involved in the regulation of m6A regulators. METTL3, METTL5, METTL14, ZC3H13, RBMX and FTO only played activating or inhibiting functions in tumour-related pathways such as Apoptosis, Cell cycle, EMT and RAS/MAPK in LUAD, while EIF3A, YTHDC2 and RBM15B only played inhibiting or activating roles in PI3K/AKT and TSC/mTOR signalling pathways in LUSC. The expression of IGF2BP3 and IGF2BP3 regulators was negatively correlated with prognostic survival in LUAD and positively correlated with prognostic survival in LUSC. Conclusions The same m6A regulators may play different regulatory roles in the biological processes of LUAD and LUSC.
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