Overexpression of DDx49 promotes cell proliferation and associated with poor prognosis in liver cancer: In silico analysis

Abstract

Liver hepatocellular carcinoma is a common cancer type with an increasing mortality rate. Identifying the potential biomarker will increase the accuracy of the diagnosis and prognosis. The aim of the study is to comprehend the DDx49 association with the liver tumorusing various bioinformatic tools. STRING and ShinyGO web-based tools were utilized to study the interacting partners and their associated pathways. The UALCAN database was used to study the expression of different demographic variables. GEPIA was performed to analyze the expression, correlation and survival of the patients. The results show that DDx49 is up-regulated in liver cancers (P< 0.0001). DDx49 is a DEAD-box helicase that is involved in RNA metabolism and the ribosomal biogenesis pathway. The alteration in the DDx49 expression may be associated with dysfunction of the pathway and promote proliferation. Additionally, the Spearman correlation revealed that DDx49 is significantly correlated with the cell cycle and apoptotic genes. In TCGA datasets, DDx49 is mostly altered by amplification in liver cancer patients. Survival analysis showed that overexpression of DDx49 leads to a poor prognosis (P = 0.0038) in hepatocellular carcinoma patients. In conclusion, this study suggests DDx49 may act as a prognostic or/and diagnostic biomarker in a patient with liver cancer.