Bioinformatics analysis of BUB1 expression and gene regulation network in lung adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer with high morbidity and mortality. Potential mechanisms and therapeutic targets of lung adenocarcinoma need further study. BUB1 (BUB1 mitotic checkpoint serine/threonine kinase) encodes a serine/threonine protein kinase which is critical in mitosis. It is associated with poor prognosis in multiple cancer types. METHODS: Oncomine database was used to determine the differential expression of BUB1 in normal and lung adenocarcinoma tissues, while UALCAN was used to perform analysis of the relative expression and survival of BUB1 between tumor and normal tissues in different tumor subgroups. We used the cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics to perform gene ontology (GO) analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis of the top 50 altered neighbor genes of BUB1. The LinkedOmics database was used to determine differential gene expression with BUB1 and to perform functional analysis. The kinase, miRNA and transcription factor target networks correlated with BUB1 were also analyzed by LinkedOmics database. RESULTS: The results revealed that BUB1 was highly expressed in lung adenocarcinoma patients. BUB1 involved multiple tumor-related pathways, such as cell cycle, oocyte meiosis and p53 signaling pathway. BUB1 is associated with tumor-associated kinases, microRNAs and transcription factors. CONCLUSIONS: Our study analyzed BUB1 expression and potential gene regulation networks in lung adenocarcinoma based on bioinformatics analysis, guiding further study on the role and regulation of BUB1 in lung adenocarcinoma. BUB1 may hopefully become a novel marker and therapeutic target for lung adenocarcinoma.