ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Cancer Genetics and Oncogenomics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1578075
Identification and validation of ubiquitination-related genes for predicting cervical cancer outcome
Provisionally accepted
- Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, China
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Abnormalities in ubiquitination-related pathways or systems are closely associated with various cancers, including cervical cancer (CC). However, the biological function and clinical value of ubiquitination-related genes (UbLGs) in CC remain unclear. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between CC (tumor) and standard samples in self-sequencing and TCGA-GTEx-CESC datasets were identified using differential analysis. We identified overlaps between DEGs in both datasets and UbLGs, revealing key crossover genes. Subsequently, biological markers were identified via univariate Cox regression analysis and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithms.After conducting independent prognostic analysis, immune infiltration analysis was performed to investigate the immune cells that differed between the two risk subgroups. Differences in immune checkpoint expression between the subgroups were analyzed. Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR) was performed to confirm the expression trends of the biomarkers.Differentially expressed genes related to ubiquitination were screened from the Self-seq and TCGA-GTEx-CESC datasets, and 5 key biomarkers (MMP1, RNF2, TFRC, SPP1, and CXCL8) were identified. The risk score model constructed based on these biomarkers could effectively predict the survival rate of cervical cancer patients (AUC > 0.6 for 1/3/5 years). Immune microenvironment analysis showed that 12 types of immune cells, including memory B cells and M0 macrophages, as well as 4 immune checkpoints, exhibited significant differences between the high-risk and low-risk groups. RT-qPCR confirmed that MMP1, TFRC, and CXCL8 were upregulated in tumor tissues. Our study identified five ubiquitination-related biomarkers, namely MMP1, RNF2, TFRC, SPP1, and CXCL8, which were significantly associated with CC. These findings provide valuable insights into advancing future research and enhancing our understanding of CC.
Keywords: Ubiquitination, cervical cancer, prognosis, biomarker, Bioinformatics analysis
Received: 17 Feb 2025; Accepted: 19 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ge, Wang, Fan, Liang and Dai. 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: Jun Wang, Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, China
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