An integrated analysis of the effects of microRNA and mRNA on esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Esophageal squamous cell cancer (ESCC) is an aggressive type of cancer with poor prognosis and leading to decreased quality of life. The identification of patients at increased risk of esophageal squamous cell cancer may improve current understanding of the role of micro (mi)RNA in tumorigenesis, since the miRNA pattern of these patients may be associated with tumorigenesis. In the present study, the miRNA and mRNA expression profiles of ESCC tissue samples and adjacent normal control tissue samples were obtained from two dependent GEO series. Bioinformatics analyses, including the use of the Gene Oncology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes databases, were used to identify genes and pathways, which were specifically associated with miRNA-associated ESCC oncology. A total of 17 miRNAs and 1,670 probes were differentially expressed in the two groups, and the differentially expressed miRNA and target interactions were analyzed. The mRNA of miRNA target genes were found to be involve 49 GO terms and 14 pathways. Of the genes differentially expressed between the two groups, miRNA-181a, miRNA-202, miRNA-155, FNDC3B, BNC2 and MBD2 were the most significantly altered and may be important in the regulatory network. In the present study, a novel pattern of differential miRNA-target expression was constructed, which with further investigation, may provide novel targets for diagnosing and understanding the mechanism of ESCC.

Figure 1

Unsupervised classification of ESCC samples and normal control samples based on mRNA expression profiling. The mRNA expression data are depicted as a data matrix, with each row representing a probe and each column representing a sample. Expression levels are depicted according to the color scale, shown at the top. Red and green indicate expression levels, above and below the median, respectively. The magnitude of deviation from the median is represented by the color saturation.

Figure 2

Histogram of signaling pathways, which different significantly between the ESCC and normal samples. X-axis, negative logarithm of the P-value (-LgP); Y-axis, pathway. The higher the -LgP, the lower the P-value. ECM, extracellular matrix; MAPK, mitogen-activated protein kinase; PPAR, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor.

Figure 3

miRNA-mRNA interaction network of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Circular nodes represent mRNAs and square nodes represent miRNAs. Blue represents downregulation and red represents upregulation. Solid lines indicate regulatory associations between the miRNAs and mRNAs.