Exploration of the Immune Microenvironment of Melanoma and Construction of Prognostic Models Based on the Expression Profile of Lysine Crotonylation-Related Genes.
Li Chen C, Cui Xinyu X, Yang Yong Y, Li Xiaoyang X et al.
Melanoma is highly invasive with poor advanced-stage prognosis and remarkable heterogeneity of the tumor immune microenvironment. Lysine crotonylation regulates tumor progression and immune processes, yet its role in melanoma remains unclear. This study aims to explore the value of crotonylation-related genes in melanoma. Transcriptomic data of 471 melanoma samples from the TCGA database were utilized. Consensus clustering was performed based on 2971 crotonylation-related genes. Differential analysis, WGCNA and LASSO regression were combined to construct a prognostic model, followed by analyses of the immune microenvironment and drug sensitivity. Molecular docking and cellular experiments were adopted to investigate the core gene SEPTIN1. Melanoma patients were classified into two subtypes (C1 and C2). Patients in the high-risk group of the established prognostic model exhibited shorter overall survival. SEPTIN1 was correlated with prognosis, immune microenvironment and TMZ response. TMZ could downregulate the expression of SEPTIN1, and overexpression of SEPTIN1 reversed the anti-tumor effect of TMZ. Expression signatures of crotonylation-related genes can be applied to molecular subtyping, immune microenvironment dissection and prognostic stratification of melanoma, providing potential clues for individualized diagnosis and treatment of melanoma.