Fig. 1

The expression pattern and clinical association of METTL16 in HCC. A METTL16 mRNA expression in human HCC tissues (n = 95) and normal liver tissues (n = 39) from GSE45436 dataset. ****P < 0.0001 by Mann–Whitney test. B METTL16 mRNA expression level in 63 pairs of HCC tissues and matched adjacent noncancerous liver tissues was measured by RT-qPCR. ****P < 0.0001 by Wilcoxon signed-rank test. C METTL16 mRNA expression level in HCC cell lines HepG2, SNU-398, Huh7, and normal hepatic cell line TLHE-2 was measured by RT-qPCR. Results are shown as mean ± standard deviation (SD) of n = 3 independent experiments. *P < 0.05 by one-way ANOVA followed by Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test. D Kaplan–Meier survival analysis of the correlation between METTL16 mRNA expression and overall survival based on TCGA liver cancer data, analyzed by the online in silico tool Kaplan–Meier Plotter (https://kmplot.com/analysis/). E Kaplan–Meier survival analysis of the correlation between METTL16 mRNA expression and overall survival in our HCC cohort. n = 63 patients with HCC. P = 0.0355 by log-rank test. Median METTL16 level was used as cutoff