Abstract
BACKGROUND: Hormone is an independent factor that induces differentiation of thyroid cancer (TC) cells. The thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) could promote the progression and invasion in TC cells. However, few genes related to hormone changes are studied in poorly differentiated metastatic TC. This study is aimed at constructing a gene set's coexpression correlation network and verifying the changes of some hub genes involved in regulating hormone levels. METHODS: Microarray datasets of TC samples were obtained from public Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. R software and bioinformatics packages were utilized to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs), important gene module eigengenes, and hub genes. Subsequently, the Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis was constructed to explore important biological processes that are associated with the mechanism of poorly differentiated TC. Finally, some hub gene expressions were validated through real-time PCR and immunoblotting. RESULTS: Gene chip with category number GSE76039 was analyzed, and 1190 DEGs were screened with criteria of P < 0.05 and ∣log(2)foldchange | >2. Our analysis showed that human dual oxidase 2 (DUOX2) and phosphodiesterase 8B (PDE8B) are the two important hub genes in a coexpression network. In addition, the validated experimental results showed that the expression levels of both DUOX2 and PDE8B were elevated in poorly differentiated metastatic TC tissues. CONCLUSION: This study identified and validated that DUOX2 and PDE8B were significantly associated with the metastasis ability of thyroid carcinoma.