Prognostic Roles of Mitochondrial Transcription Termination Factor 1 and Mitochondrial Transcription Elongation Factor in Colon Adenocarcinoma

Mitochondrial transcription elongation factor (TEFM) and mitochondrial transcription termination factor MTERF1 modulate and regulate mitochondrial gene transcription and metabolism in most of the cells present in the body. Earlier studies have indicated that MTERF1 and TEFM play a pivotal role in pathogenesis of different types of cancer. However, the mRNA expression and prognostic roles of MTERF1 and TEFM in colon cancer patients remains unknown. The current objective was to investigate the alteration in mRNA expression level using FPKM data available in TCGA database, and evaluation of prognostic roles of MTERF1 and TEFM in patients with colon cancer using the Human Protein Atlas Database. The mRNA expression levels of TEFM were significantly increased in colon cancer patients as compared with normal colon tissue samples. the mRNA levels of MTERF1 was significantly de-creased in colon cancer tissue compared to the normal adjacent tissues. High mRNA expression levels of TEFM and low mRNA expression levels were strongly associated with an improved overall survival rate (OS) in patients with colon adenocarcinoma. These results indicate the prognostic values of MTERF1 and TEFM expression levels in colon cancer. The findings from the present study may be useful for understanding the basic molecular mechanism of colon adenocarcinoma for making effective and efficient therapeu-tic treatments.