Research Paper Volume 15, Issue 8 pp 2937—2969
FARSB serves as a novel hypomethylated and immune cell infiltration related prognostic biomarker in hepatocellular carcinoma
- 1 Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
- 2 Second College of Clinical Medicine, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
- 3 Department of Ultrasonography, Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
Received: December 28, 2022 Accepted: March 9, 2023 Published: April 3, 2023
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204619How to Cite
Copyright: © 2023 Zhen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Purpose: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prevalent tumor with high morbidity, and an unfavourable prognosis. FARSB is an aminoacyl tRNA synthase, and plays a key role in protein synthesis in cells. Furthermore, previous reports have indicated that FARSB is overexpressed in gastric tumor tissues and is associated with a poor prognosis and tumorigenesis. However, the function of FARSB in HCC has not been studied.
Results: The results showed that FARSB mRNA and protein levels were upregulated in HCC and were closely related to many clinicopathological characteristics. Besides, according to multivariate Cox analysis, high FARSB expression was linked with a shorter survival time in HCC and may be an independent prognostic factor. In addition, the FARSB promoter methylation level was negatively associated with the expression of FARSB. Furthermore, enrichment analysis showed that FARSB was related to the cell cycle. And TIMER analysis revealed that the FARSB expression was closely linked to tumor purity and immune cell infiltration. The TCGA and ICGC data analysis suggested that FARSB expression is greatly related to m6A modifier related genes. Potential FARSB-related ceRNA regulatory networks were also constructed. What’s more, based on the FARSB-protein interaction network, molecular docking models of FARSB and RPLP1 were constructed. Finally, drug susceptibility testing revealed that FARSB was susceptible to 38 different drugs or small molecules.
Conclusions: FARSB can serve as a prognostic biomarker for HCC and provide clues about immune infiltration, and m6A modification.
Abbreviations
HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma; FARSB: Phenylalanyl-TRNA Synthetase Subunit Beta; TIMER: Tumor Immune Estimation Resource; TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas; ICGC: International Cancer Genome Consortium; GO: Gene Ontology; KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes; GSEA: Gene Set Enrichment Analysis; PPI: protein-protein interaction; TIIC: Tumor infiltrating immune cells; AFP: Alpha Fetoprotein; CNV: Copy number variation.