Aberrantly methylated-differentially genes and pathways among Iranian patients with colorectal cancer

Abstract

Background Methylation plays an important role in colorectal cancer (CRC) pathogenesis. The goal of this study was to identify aberrantly differentially methylated genes (DMGs) and pathways through bioinformatics analysis among Iranian CRC patients using Methylation Next Generation Sequencing. Methods This study has integrated results of SureSelectXT Methyl-Seq Target with the potential key candidate genes and pathways in CRC. Six CRC and six samples of normal colon were integrated and deeply analyzed. In addition to this gene methylation profiling, several other gene methylation profiling datasets were obtained from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and TCGA datasets. DMGs were sorted and candidate genes and enrichment pathways were analyzed. DMGs-associated protein–protein interaction network (PPI) was constructed based on the STRING online database. Results Totally, 320 genes were detected as common genes between our patients and selected GEO and TCGA datasets from the Agilent SureSelect analysis with selecting criteria of p-value < 0.05 and FC ≥ 1.5. DMGs were identified from hyper-DMGs PPI network complex and 10 KEGG pathways were identified. The most important modules were extracted from MCODE, as most of the corresponding genes were involved in cellular process and protein binding. Conclusions Hub genes including WNT2, SFRP2, ZNF726 and BMP2 were suggested as potentially diagnostic and therapeutic targets for CRC.

Oncogenic role of an uncharacterized cold‐induced zinc finger protein 726 in breast cancer

“…The versatile web‐interactive servers featured a high expression of ZNF726 in all breast cancer subclasses. However, on the contrary, few recent studies based on online databases reported least expression of ZNF726 with a high level of methylation in colorectal cancer (CRC) identifying it as a prognosis‑associated gene for CRC 58,59 . While in this study, high ZNF726 expression correlated to a higher HR in breast cancer patients, which slightly hinted that ZNF726 could be a potential prognostic marker in breast cancer.…”

“…However, on the contrary, few recent studies based on online databases reported least expression of ZNF726 with a high level of methylation in colorectal cancer (CRC) identifying it as a prognosis-associated gene for CRC. 58,59 While in this study, high ZNF726 expression correlated to a higher HR in breast cancer patients, which slightly hinted that ZNF726 could be a potential prognostic marker in breast cancer. On further experimental validation, our data demonstrated an elevated ZNF726 transcript in the malignant breast tumor tissues than the benign.…”