Bioinformatics and survival analysis of glia maturation factor-γ in pan-cancers.
BACKGROUND
Glia maturation factor-γ (GMFG) is reported to inhibit the actin nucleation through binding to the actin-related protein-2/3 complex (Arp2/3). Considering the main function of GMFG in actin remodeling, which is vital for immune response, angiogenesis, cell division and motility, GMFG is supposed to have important roles in tumor development, while up to now, only two studies described the role of GMFG in cancers. By investigating the clinical values of GMFG using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data and the functional mechanisms of GMFG through analyses of Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichments, this study was aimed to better understand the impact of GMFG in pan-cancers and to draw more attentions for the future research of GMFG.


METHODS
RNA-seq and clinical data of cancer patients were collected from TCGA and analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier methods. GO and KEGG analyses were conducted using the online tools from the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID).


RESULTS
Compared to the corresponding normal samples, GMFG was significantly upregulated in glioblastoma (GBM), kidney clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), lower grade glioma (LGG), acute myeloid leukemia (LAML), and pancreatic cancer (PAAD), testicular cancer (TGCT), but was downregulated in kidney chromophobe (KICH), lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) (P < 0.05 for all). High expression of GMFG predicted worse OS in GBM (HR = 1.5, P = 0.017), LGG (HR = 2.2, P < 0.001), LUSC (HR = 1.4, P = 0.022) and ocular melanomas (UVM) (HR = 7, P < 0.001), as well as worse DFS in LGG (HR = 1.8, P < 0.001) and prostate cancer (PRAD) (HR = 1.9, P = 0.004). In contrast, high expression of GMFG was associated with better OS in skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) (HR = 0.59, P < 0.001) and thymoma (THYM) (HR = 0.098, P = 0.031), as well as better DFS in bile duct cancer (CHOL) (HR = 0.2, P = 0.003). GMFG was mainly involved in the immune response, protein binding and cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction pathways, and was positively associated with multiple immunomodulators in most cancers.


CONCLUSION
Our study preliminarily identified that GMFG may cause different survivals for different cancers through modulating tumor progression, immune response status and tissue-specific tumor microenvironment (TME).
['Lan|Aihua|A|', 'Ren|Chunxia|C|', 'Wang|Xiaoling|X|', 'Tong|Guoqing|G|', 'Yang|Gong|G|']
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor D019295:Computational Biology D020869:Gene Expression Profiling D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic D063990:Gene Ontology D020904:Glia Maturation Factor D006801:Humans D056747:Immunomodulation D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate D009367:Neoplasm Staging D009928:Organ Specificity D010190:Pancreatic Neoplasms D011379:Prognosis D059467:Transcriptome D059016:Tumor Microenvironment
Bioinformatics Survival Glia maturation factor-γ Immune response Cancer Tumor microenvironment