Fig. 1

ASPA is down-regulated in PCa. a Volcano plot showed all expression changes of genes in the TCGA-PRAD dataset including 498 PCa and 52 normal tissues (left) and our RNA-seq dataset including 18 PCa and 9 normal tissues (right). Blue and red dots indicate down- and up-regulated genes, respectively. b Venn diagram showed the overlapping differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in TCGA-PRAD and RNA-Seq datasets. c Venn diagram showed the overlap of PFS-related DEGs in four GEO datasets. d Heatmap analysis of the overlapping PFS-related DEGs between PCa and normal tissues in four GEO datasets. e Kaplan–Meier curves of ASPA in PCa for PFS. f The expression level of ASPA in PCa from TCGA-PRAD and GTEx datasets (left) and in paired tissues from patients of TCGA-PRAD (right). g The expression level of ASPA in 9 normal prostate tissues and 18 PCa tissues from RNA-Seq dataset. h The expression level of ASPA in normal tissues (n = 23) and PCa (n = 26) by RT-qPCR. The mRNA expression levels were normalized to ACTB levels. i Representative Western blotting analysis (left) and quantification results (right) of ASPA expression in 18 PCa samples with paired normal tissues. Protein expression was normalized to β-actin levels. j Representative immunohistochemical staining images of ASPA expression in 5 PCa samples with paired normal tissues (scale bar = 100 μm). The data are presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). ASPA aspartoacylase, GEO gene expression omnibus, GTEx Genotype-Tissue Expression project, HR hazard ration, CI confidence interval, TCGA-PRAD The Cancer Genome Atlas Prostate Adenocarcinoma, RNA-Seq RNA sequencing, TCGA The Cancer Genome Atlas, PFS progression-free survival, RT-qPCR real-time quantitative PCR, PCa prostate cancer, N normal, T tumor. **P < 0.01