Fig. 1: Aberrantly high-expressing Drosha-independent mirtronic miR-4646-5p was present in Drosha-knockdown GC cells, which are related to GC metastasis and poor prognosis.

A The heatmap of down- or up-regulated miRNAs (top 30 miRNAs) identified by miRNA array in MGC-803 Drosha-knockdown (KD) cells. B The change of 3 classic miRNA and 13 of selected Drosha-independent mirtrons in microarray were validation by qRT-PCR. C qRT–PCR analysis of miR-4646-5p expression in Drosha WT and Drosha KD gastric cancer cells (**p < 0.01). D Expression of miR-4646-5p in gastric cancers from starBasev3.0 (left panel), or in normal and gastric tumor tissues from TCGA STAD data (middle panel), and the relative expression of miR-4646-5p in our cohort of clinical gastric cancer tissue (n = 30) and corresponding normal gastric tissue (n = 30) (right panel) (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01). E Survival curve of gastric cancer patients with low or high miR-4646-5p expression (p = 0.0136) from TCGA STAD data. F Multivariable risk analyses of miR-4646-5p using TCGA STAD data. All the bars correspond to 95% confidence intervals. G Expression of miR-4646-5p in gastric cancer samples without lymph node metastases (N0) compared to samples with lymph node metastases (N1–N3). miRNA expression data and patient information were downloaded from UCSC Xena (https://xena.ucsc.edu/) (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01). H TCGA STAD data to show miR-4646-5p levels in GC patients with distant metastases (M1) and non-distant metastases (M0) groups (*p < 0.05). (I) miR-4646-5p levels in GC tissues from the patients with metastases (M+, n = 20) and the age- and sex-matched patients without metastases (M−, n = 20) (**p < 0.01).