UBE2I promotes metastasis and correlates with poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma

A comprehensive investigation of ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme E2I (UBE2I) in cancer is still insufficiency. In this study, we aimed to analyze its role and mechanism in cancer by combination of bioinformatic analysis and experimental validation.

The expression profile of UBE2I in human cancers were obtained using GEPIA. Kaplan-Meier plotter was used to assess the prognostic values of UBE2I in diverse types of cancer. ROC curve analysis was employed to determine the diagnostic role of UBE2I in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The expression differences based on various clinicopathological features was evaluated by UALCAN. Wound healing assay and transwell invasion assay were used to detected the effects of UBE2I on migration and invasion of HCC cells, respectively. The miRNA regulatory mechanism of UBE2I was successively investigated by binding prediction, expression analysis, survival analysis and dual-luciferase reporter assay. The correlation of UBE2I mRNA expression and UBE2I promoter methylation level was assessed using cBioPortal. STRING was finally introduced to perform co-expression analysis and enrichment analysis for UBE2I.

UBE2I was upregulated in HCC, correlated with cancer progression and poor prognosis of HCC. We also found a significant diagnostic value of UBE2I in HCC. Functional experiments revealed that knockdown of UBE2I significantly inhibited HCC migration and invasion. Further research on mechanism suggested that loss of inhibition of hsa-miR-195-3p and dysregulation of UBE2I promoter methylation might account for UBE2I overexpression in HCC. Analysis of UBE2I-invovled regulatory network identified six key genes (NSMCE2, SAE1, UBA2, RANGAP1, SUMO1 and SUMO2) whose expression linked to poor prognosis in HCC.

In conclusion, UBE2I may be a promising therapeutic target and biomarker in cancer, especially HCC.