Role of m(5)C RNA methylation regulators in colorectal cancer prognosis and immune microenvironment

BACKGROUND: RNA modification has become one of the hot topics of research as it can be used for tumor prognosis. However, its role in various biological processes is still poorly understood. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of m(5)C and m(1)A regulators on colorectal cancer prognosis using bioinformatics tools. The association between these regulators and differences in patient survival as well as the clinicopathological characteristics and tumor immune microenvironment in colorectal cancer tissues were assessed. METHODS: We selected publicly available colorectal cancer data sets from The Cancer Genome Atlas and used the “limma” package in R to identify differentially expressed genes. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression model was used to calculate the prognostic risk, and a risk prediction model was constructed, to help assess the prognostic values of the differentially expressed genes. Finally, using TISCH and TIMER, we assessed the extent of cellular infiltration in colorectal cancer. RESULTS: We explored NSUN6 and DNMT3A expression using UALCAN and HPA and found that their expression is significantly increased in colorectal cancer tissues and correlated with sex and TP53 mutation status. Moreover, we found NSUN6 and DNMT3A were related to the infiltration of six major immune cells, with DNMT3A being closely related to dendritic cells, CD4(+) T cells, and B cells, whereas NSUN6 to B cells and CD8(+) T cells. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that m(5)C regulators can predict the clinical prognostic risk and regulate the tumor immune microenvironment in colorectal cancer.