Integrative Analysis of DNA Methylation and Gene Expression in Skin Cutaneous Melanoma by Bioinformatic Approaches
Abstract Skin cutaneous melanoma is the most life-threatening skin cancer. Finding key methylation genes of prognostic value is an under-explored but intriguing field in the research of skin cutaneous melanoma. This work is aimed to identify survival related methylated genes and their specific methylation sites in skin cutaneous melanoma via an integrative analysis with bioinformatic approaches. The original data, including gene methylation and expression files, were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas database. Statistical analysis revealed that skin cutaneous melanoma patients with highly expressed and hypomethylated HHEX had a better outcome than patients with lowly-expressed and hypermethylated HHEX. In addition, fifteen methylation sites of HHEX were identified to be significantly correlated with HHEX expression changes. In various pathological stages, the expression levels of HHEX were different, and exhibited a downward trend from stage Ⅰ to stage Ⅳ. Therefore, we speculate that the driven gene HHEX may play an important role in the survival of skin cutaneous melanoma. This finding provides novel epigenetic molecular clues and potential detection targets for early prediction of the prognosis of skin cutaneous melanoma.