Abstract

Plakophilin 3 as key regulators of different signaling programs and control a variety of cellular processes, including transcription, protein synthesis, growth, proliferation, and tumor development. However, the potential biological functions and mechanisms of plakophilin 3 in lung adenocarcinoma progression are unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of plakophilin 3 gene in lung adenocarcinoma and found that plakophilin 3 gene expression was significantly increased in datasets extracted from the cancer genome atlas. Gene set enrichment analysis enrichment confirmed that plakophilin 3 gene was significantly related to 8 pathways, which indicated that plakophilin 3 gene, affected the occurrence and development of lung adenocarcinoma. In addition, the results of gene ontology and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes pathway enrichment of differentially expressed genes indicate plakophilin 3 genes mean expression in lung adenocarcinoma patients, which included the necroptosis, and apoptosis. The following genes have been shown to be associated with this pathway, including CAPN1, FAM83H, plakophilin 3, EPS8L2, SSH3 and SLC25A22. Besides, single-sample gene set enrichment analysis enrichment showed that plakophilin 3 gene expression was correlated with immune response-related signaling pathways. In addition, by studying plakophilin 3 gene and drug net, we found that the plakophilin 3 genes associated with lung adenocarcinoma chemotherapy drug resistance. Similarly, the results of the plakophilin 3 gene and our clinical sample results also confirmed that plakophilin 3 gene was highly expressed in lung adenocarcinoma and correlated with adverse clinical outcomes. In this study, our data demonstrated that plakophilin 3 gene is associated with lung adenocarcinoma necrotizing apoptosis and immune infiltration, is associated with the development of lung adenocarcinoma, and can be used as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma.