ABSTRACT
Ubiquitination is a reversible post-translational modification that regulates protein stability and plays a function in numerous signaling pathways. Deubiquitinases play important roles in the regulation of the occurrence and development of different cancers. In this study, we analyzed the survival and prognosis of liver cancer patients according to the expression levels of 63 deubiquitinases. Results discovered that JOSD2 expression in tumor was significantly higher than that in the adjacent tissue (P<0. 0001) and was negatively associated with overall survival of patients (P < 0. 05). JOSD2 is a deubiquitinase from MJD sub-family. Other members of this sub-family were not correlated with liver cancer. The pathways related to cell proliferation were significantly enriched (FDR < 0. 05) in a differential gene function enrichment analysis of JOSD2 high-expressing samples in TCGA data. In hepatoma cell lines, we demonstrated that the overexpression of JOSD2 significantly enhances cell survival, migration and invasion. In conclusion, this study found that JOSD2 is highly expressed in liver cancer (P = 0. 041), and that patients with high-expressed JOSD2 have significantly shorter overall survival. Furthermore, overexpression of JOSD2 can promote the survival and metastasis of hepatoma cells (P < 0. 01), which suggests that JOSD2 might promote the survival and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma.