Mechanistic study on the promotion of pancreatic cancer progression through upregulation of ZNF143 by dysregulated fatty acid metabolism

Objective·To identify key genes that may be regulated by fatty acid alteration in pancreatic cancer through tumor transcriptome screening, and to explore the expression of zinc finger protein 143 (ZNF143) in pancreatic cancer and its effect on the migration and invasion of pancreatic cancer cells.Methods·The R language was utilized to integrate transcriptome data, including the GSE164760 dataset from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, 179 pancreatic cancer tissue samples and 4 adjacent non-cancerous tissue samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, as well as 167 normal pancreatic tissue samples from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) database. We conducted screening and analysis of potential differential genes that may be induced by dysregulation of fatty acid metabolism in pancreatic cancer. After treating pancreatic cancer cells with palmitic acid (PA) and oleic acid (OA) for 24 hours, the mRNA levels of candidate genes were detected by qRT-PCR. According to the median expression level of the screened gene, pancreatic cancer patients in the TCGA database were divided into two groups with high and low expression of ZNF143. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway and Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analyses were performed for the differential genes of the two groups. siRNA was used to knock down the expression of ZNF143 in pancreatic cancer cells, and the effects on cell migration and invasion were examined by wound healing assay and invasion assay. Western blotting was used to explore the impact of ZNF143 on epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related proteins and the Wnt/β-catenin pathway.Results·The bioinformatics database was processed to analyze key genes associated with the up-regulation of genes in lipid metabolism disorders in pancreatic cancer and liver cancer. Among them, ZNF143 was a potential gene associated with fatty acid accumulation in pancreatic cancer. In vitro experiments confirmed that the mRNA level of ZNF143 was significantly up-regulated after treating pancreatic cancer cells with palmitic acid or oleic acid. Both KEGG and GO enrichment analyses demonstrated that the differentially expressed genes associated with ZNF143 were predominantly enriched in adhesion pathways. In functional experiments, the migration and invasion abilities of pancreatic cancer cells transfected with ZNF143 siRNA were reduced, and the expression of EMT-related proteins was also decreased, potentially related to the activation of the Wnt/β- catenin pathway.Conclusion·Fatty acid accumulation up-regulates the mRNA expression of ZNF143 in pancreatic cancer cells, and ZNF143 may enhance the migration and invasion of these cells by facilitating EMT through activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway.