Integrative analysis of the role of BOLA2B in human pan-cancer

Mingxing Liang; Yinjiao Fei; Yalin Wang; Wenquan Chen; Zhen Liu; Di Xu; Hongyu Shen; Honglei Zhou; Jinhai Tang

doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1077126

Integrative analysis of the role of BOLA2B in human pan-cancer

Front Genet. 2023 Feb 27:14:1077126. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1077126. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Mingxing Liang¹, Yinjiao Fei¹, Yalin Wang², Wenquan Chen¹, Zhen Liu¹, Di Xu¹, Hongyu Shen¹, Honglei Zhou¹, Jinhai Tang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
² School of Clinical Medicine, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, China.

Abstract

Objective: BOLA2B is a recently discovered protein-coding gene. Here, pan-cancer analysis was conducted to determine the expression patterns of BOLA2B and its impact on immune response, gene mutation, and possible molecular biological mechanisms in different tumors, together with investigating its potential usefulness for cancer prognosis. Methods: Data on BOLA2B expression and mutations were downloaded from TCGA and GTEx databases. Clinical survival data from TCGA were used to analyze the prognostic value of BOLA2B. TIMER and ESTIMATE algorithms were used to assess correlations between BOLA2B and tumor-infiltrating immune cells, immune cytokines, and immune scores. Results: BOLA2B was found to be highly expressed at both mRNA and protein levels in multiple tumors, where it was associated with worse overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and progression-free interval (PFI) in all cancers apart from ovarian cancer. BOLA2B was also found to be positively correlated with copy number variation (CNV), and mutations in TP53, TTN, and MUC16 were found to influence BOLA2B expression. Post-transcriptional modifications, including m5C, m1A, and m6A, were observed to regulate BOLA2B expression in all cancers. Functional analysis showed that BOLA2B was enriched in pathways associated with iron-sulfur cluster formation, mTOR-mediated autophagy, and cell cycle inhibition. Decreased BOLA2B expression induced the proliferation of breast cancer cells and G2/M cell cycle arrest. Conclusion: BOLA2B was found to be highly expressed in malignant tumors and could be used as a biomarker of poor prognosis in multiple cancers. Further investigation into BOLA2B's role and molecular functions in cancer would provide new insights for cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: BOLA2B; immune infiltration; mutation; pan-cancer; proliferation.

Grants and funding

Our study was supported by the Program of Clinical Medicine Expert Team of Suzhou, China (No. SZYJTD201824), the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (No. KYCX20_1398), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82103626), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2022M711411), and the Zhejiang Provincial Medical and Health Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 2021KY547).