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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

Sec. Intestinal Microbiome

Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1585881

This article is part of the Research TopicNew Insights into Gut Microbiota in Colorectal CancerView all 5 articles

Gut Microbiome-Mediated Epigenetic Modifications in Gastric Cancer: A Comprehensive Multio-Omics Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Zi-xing  QIANZi-xing QIAN1,2Wei  BaiWei Bai1,2JiaXuan  LiJiaXuan Li1Xianjun  RaoXianjun Rao1Guodong  HuangGuodong Huang1Xueping  ZhangXueping Zhang1WU  WenyuWU Wenyu2JiaBao  LiuJiaBao Liu2Wei  WeiWei Wei1*
  • 1Wangjing Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 2College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Abstract Background: Gastric cancer (GC), a malignant and highly proliferative disease, has profoundly impacts a substantial global population and is associated with several variables, including genetic, epigenetic, and environmental impacts. Global variance is associated with Helicobacter pylori infection and dietary factors. Objectives: The aim of the present study was to understand and identify key genes significantly modulated by epigenetic changes that can serve as biomarkers and therapeutic targets for gastric cancer. Methods: This study employed an integrative multiomics approach to investigate gut microbiome-mediated epigenetic modifications in gastric cancer by utilizing publicly available transcriptomic and DNA methylation datasets, Quality control, normalization and deferentially expressed gene analysis of sequencing data were performed via standard bioinformatics pipelines. Functional enrichment analyses, including GO and KEGG pathway mapping, were performed to elucidate the biological pathways influenced by these interactions and network analysis was conducted using Cytoscape to identify hub genes. . We conducted in vitro assays using the gastric adenocarcinoma cell lines AGS and MKN45, and the normal gastric epithelial cell line GES-1. The expression of selected candidate genes was evaluated using real-time PCR in these cell lines. Results:The GEO2R and coexpression network analyses revealed that six genes MAPK1, NOXO1, CUL1, CDK1, CDK2, and CCNB1 were significantly altered by modified DNA methylation and mRNA expression in GC. Owing to their identification across all epigenetic, transcriptomic, and miRNA datasets, we have designated these genes as shared genes. The results showed that the relative gene expression levels of MKN45 and AGS cell lines were higher than those in the GES-1 cell line in the control. , and the results were aligned with the in silico findings. Conclusions: CDK1, CDK2, NOXO1, CUL1, MAPK1, and CCNB1 play pivotal roles in GC carcinogenesis and hold promise as early diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for GC.

Keywords: epigenetics, gut microbiome, gastric cancer, Hub genes, miRNAs, Transcriptomics sequencing

Received: 01 Mar 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 QIAN, Bai, Li, Rao, Huang, Zhang, Wenyu, Liu and Wei. 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: Wei Wei, weiwei3816@outlook.com

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