Fig. 1

CircNSUN2 was upregulated in CRCs with liver metastasis (LM). a Top, flowchart illustrating the screening criteria of potential regulatory circRNAs enriched in CRCs. Bottom, clustered heatmap showing the dysregulated expression of circRNAs occurrent in both two CRC samples (the |average normalized fold change| ≥ 1.3) within susceptibility loci of CRC analyzed by CircRNAs Microarray. b qRT-PCR analysis of circNSUN2 expression in 97 CRC tissues and matched adjacent normal tissue. Data represent mean ± S.D., the P value was determined by a two-tailed paired Student’s t test. c Kaplan−Meier analysis of OS in CRC patients with low versus high expression the circNSUN2 from SYSUCC cohorts. The P value was determined by a Log-rank test. d qRT-PCR analysis of circNSUN2 expression from 18 normal colorectal tissues, 22 colorectal adenomas, 97 CRC patients without liver metastasis and 25 CRC patients with liver metastasis. Data represent mean ± S.D., the P values were determined by an unpaired Student’s t test. e qRT-PCR analysis of circNSUN2 expression in 20 pairs of primary colorectal cancer tissues (PC) and matched liver metastasis tissues (LM) surgically obtained from the same patients. Data represent mean ± S.D., the P value was determined by a two-tailed paired Student’s t test. f qRT-PCR analysis of circNSUN2 expression in serum from 18 normal control, 20 CRC patients without LM and 20 CRC patients with LM from the SYSUCC. Data represent mean ± S.D., the P values were determined by an unpaired Student’s t test