Fig. 1: USP21 is amplified and correlates with poor survival in Human HCCs.

a Volcano plots of 51 USPs relative expression in HCCs, based on TCGA RNA-sequencing data. In TCGA, 5 USPs exhibited significantly differential abundance (p < 0.001, absolute fold change > 1.5) when comparing HCC tumors with adjacent normal liver tissues. Red and green indicate high and low expression level in HCC, respectively. b Volcano plots of 35 USPs relative expression in HCCs, based on GSE14520 RNA-sequencing data. 5 USPs exhibited significantly differential abundances (p < 0.001, absolute fold change >1.5), which are indicated with red color. c Box plots of USP21 expression in normal liver and tumor tissues in three independent cohorts of HCC cases. d Box plots of USP21 gene copy number in normal liver and tumor tissues from TCGA. e Correlation between copy number variation and USP21 expression change in tumor compared to non-tumor tissue, based on TCGA data. f, g Kaplan–Meier Overall Survival curve based on USP21 expression in two independent datasets of HCC, namely TCGA (f) and GSE14520 (g). Cases were devided into two groups using the minimum p value approach. Unless noted, p values are based on Student’s two-tailed t-test