High-Throughput Sequencing Reveals That Rotundine Inhibits Colorectal Cancer by Regulating Prognosis-Related Genes

Lingyu Huang; Tongxiang Zou; Wenken Liang; Chune Mo; Jianfen Wei; Yecheng Deng; Minglin Ou

doi:10.3390/jpm13030550

High-Throughput Sequencing Reveals That Rotundine Inhibits Colorectal Cancer by Regulating Prognosis-Related Genes

J Pers Med. 2023 Mar 20;13(3):550. doi: 10.3390/jpm13030550.

Authors

Lingyu Huang¹, Tongxiang Zou¹, Wenken Liang¹, Chune Mo², Jianfen Wei¹, Yecheng Deng¹, Minglin Ou²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Ecology of Rare and Endangered Species and Environmental Protection, Ministry of Education of China/College of Life Science, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541006, China huanglingyu99@163.com (L.H.).
² Central Laboratory, Guangxi Health Commission Key Laboratory of Glucose and Lipid Metabolism Disorders, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guilin Medical University, Guilin 541000, China.

Abstract

Background: Rotundine is an herbal medicine with anti-cancer effects. However, little is known about the anti-cancer effect of rotundine on colorectal cancer. Therefore, our study aimed to investigate the specific molecular mechanism of rotundine inhibition of colorectal cancer.

Methods: MTT and cell scratch assay were performed to investigate the effects of rotundine on the viability, migration, and invasion ability of SW480 cells. Changes in cell apoptosis were analyzed by flow cytometry. DEGs were detected by high-throughput sequencing after the action of rotundine on SW480 cells, and the DEGs were subjected to function enrichment analysis. Bioinformatics analyses were performed to screen out prognosis-related DEGs of COAD. Followed by enrichment analysis of prognosis-related DEGs. Furthermore, prognostic models were constructed, including ROC analysis, risk curve analysis, PCA and t-SNE, Nomo analysis, and Kaplan-Meier prognostic analysis.

Results: In this study, we showed that rotundine concentrations of 50 μM, 100 μM, 150 μM, and 200 μM inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of SW480 cells in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. Rotundine does not induce SW480 cell apoptosis. Compared to the control group, high-throughput results showed that there were 385 DEGs in the SW480 group. And DEGs were associated with the Hippo signaling pathway. In addition, 16 of the DEGs were significantly associated with poorer prognosis in COAD, with MEF2B, CCDC187, PSD2, RGS16, PLXDC1, HELB, ASIC3, PLCH2, IGF2BP3, CLHC1, DNHD1, SACS, H1-4, ANKRD36, and ZNF117 being highly expressed in COAD and ARV1 being lowly expressed. Prognosis-related DEGs were mainly enriched in cancer-related pathways and biological functions, such as inositol phosphate metabolism, enterobactin transmembrane transporter activity, and enterobactin transport. Prognostic modeling also showed that these 16 DEGs could be used as predictors of overall survival prognosis in COAD patients.

Conclusions: Rotundine inhibits the development and progression of colorectal cancer by regulating the expression of these prognosis-related genes. Our findings could further provide new directions for the treatment of colorectal cancer.

Keywords: colorectal cancer; high-throughput sequencing; prognosis-related genes; rotundine.

Grants and funding

The authors are very grateful for the financial support from the Science and Technology Plan of Guilin (Declaration No. 20222E394054), Guangxi Medical and health key cultivation discipline construction project, Guangxi Health Commission Key Laboratory of Glucose and Lipid Metabolism Disorders (grant no. 19-xkjs-05).