Identification Of Hub Genes Of Esophageal Carcinoma By Integrated Bioinformatics Analysis And Preliminary Verification

Objective: To gain critical genes about esophageal carcinoma by referring to public microarray databases and to investigate the biological functions of the selected genes by bioinformatics analysis.Materials and methods: Firstly,GSE17351 and GSE45670 datasets were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO)database.Also,another dataset related to esophageal carcinoma from the Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA)database was retrieved.Secondly,the R language software package was used for each of the downloaded dataset respectively for data preprocessing and differential expression analysis,and then,common differentially expressed genes(DEGs)were screened out.Thirdly,DEGs were analyzed by Gene Ontology(GO)and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG)pathway analysis,and a protein–protein interaction(PPI)network based on the STRING website was utilized to pick out hub genes and the Cytoscape software was constructed.Lastly,prognostic values were evaluated among the hub genes.In addition,the expression of CNKN3 mRNA in esophageal cancer was verified by RT-PCR.Results: There were 335 common DEGs of the three datasets.In survival analysis,CDKN3 and RAD51AP1 wereprognostic factors,and the survival was significantly better in the low-expression group.Conclusions: In conclusion,our study suggested that CDKN3 and RAD51AP1 may be potential tumor oncogenes and could serve as biomarkers to predict the prognosis of esophageal carcinoma patients.