ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bioinform.
Sec. RNA Bioinformatics
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2025.1605681
Bioinformatics analysis of lncRNA and mRNA differentially expressed in patients with cervical cancer
Provisionally accepted
Xiaohua An
Xiaoxue Huang
Qiujie YuYiyue Tang
Yan WangHuasu ChenYafei ZhangQianhao HuangYudi RaoGuomei Hu
He Zha*- The Third Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
To verify the expression profile of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and mRNAs in cervical cancer, identify their clinical significance in HPV16-associated cervical cancer, and annotate the biological function of mRNAs.Three pairs of cancerous and paracancer tissues were selected in cervical squamous cell carcinoma (IB2 stage), high-throughput sequencing was utilized to determine the expression levels of lncRNAs and mRNAs. The detection results were validated by GEPIA database analysis and RT-qPCR. Functional annotations of differential mRNAs were conducted through Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network states. Furthermore, the association between antisense lncRNA and mRNA in cervical cancer was analyzed to predict the biological functions of lncRNA. Finally, recombinant lentivirus CV224-HPV16 E6/E7 was transfected into HcerEpic to establish a stable cell line with overexpressed HPV16 E6/E7, then differential lncRNAs were detected by RT-qPCR. Compared to paracancerous tissues, there were 3,608 lncRNAs significantly up-regulated and 4,383 lncRNAs significantly down-regulated in cervical cancer tissues (Fold change > 2 and P < 0.05). Additionally, 3,666 mRNAs were significantly up-regulated, while 2,220 mRNAs were significantly down-regulated (Fold change > 2 and P < 0.05). GO/KEGG enrichment analysis showed that differentially expressed mRNA played a significant role in cell cycle and cell senescence, and was related to signal pathways such as cAMP and MAPK, forming a complex network among the proteins encoded by these mRNAs. Further analysis indicated that the 20 antisense lncRNAs with the most remarkable differences might exert biological functions by influencing their corresponding mRNAs. The results of RT-qPCR revealed that CDKN2B-AS1, HAGLROS and GATA6-AS1 were potentially regulated by HPV16 E6/E7, which were in accordance with those obtained from chip detection. In this study, differentially expressed lncRNAs associated with HPV16 infection were screened and explored their transcriptional molecular functions and biological pathways, providing a molecular basis for predicting diagnostic markers of cervical cancer.
Keywords: cervical cancer, lncRNA, mRNA, HPV16 E6/E7, High-throughput sHigh-throughput sequencingequencing
Received: 03 Apr 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 An, Huang, Yu, Tang, Wang, Chen, Zhang, Huang, Rao, Hu and Zha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: He Zha, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.