Fig. 1: USP12 is highly expressed and linked to a poor prognosis, correlating with the Hippo/YAP signaling pathway in gastric cancer.

A Flow chart of deubiquitinating enzyme library screening in AGS cell lines. Transfect AGS cells with 20uM siRNA to knockdown each of the 96 human DUB genes. After 48 h, quantitative analysis of gene expression is performed by qRT-PCR. B The classical target gene CTGF was used to indicate YAP. The siRNA screening data demonstrated that USP12 was required for CTGF gene expression in AGS cells. C The expression of USP12 is significantly increased in gastric cancer tissues compared to normal tissues in the TCGA database (FC = 1.18, P < 0.001). *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001. D Kaplan−Meier analysis comparing the overall shows that high USP12 expression is associated with poor prognosis in gastric cancer patients from public meta-analysis data (https://kmplot.com/analysis/). E The TCGA database provided transcriptome samples from gastric cancer patients, which were divided into two cohorts based on USP12 expression levels (high vs. low, 50% each). Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) was conducted to assess the impact of USP12 expression levels on the enrichment of YAP signature genes. F Heatmap of correlation analysis between USP12 expression and YAP target genes in TCGA data of gastric cancer.