Blood Cell DNA Methylation of Aging-Related Ubiquitination Gene DZIP3 Can Predict the Onset of Early Stage Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

There is a body of evidence that the aging immune system is linked to cancer. In this study, with aging- and immune-related DNA methylation data, we investigated the DNA methylation regulation changes in promoters with other regions of genes during aging and their association with the immune-cell proportion in the circulating whole blood of individuals. The analyses for aging- and CD4+ T cell proportion-derived differential genes showed that ubiquitination plays an important role in the aging immune system and tumorigenesis. Therefore, starting from a set of pre-annotated ubiquitination genes, we found that among the differentially ubiquitinated genes, <i>DZIP3</i>, an E3 ubiquitin ligase with no reports on its function in immune cells and tumorigenesis, was significantly associated with both aging (P-value = 3.86e-06) and CD4+ T cell proportion (P-value = 1.97e-05) in circulating blood. By collecting a cohort of 100 colon cancer patients and 50 healthy individuals, we validated that the 1^st exon DNA methylation of <i>DZIP3</i> could predict the onset of early stage (AUC = 0.833, OR = 8.82) and all pTNM stages of colorectal cancer (AUC = 0.782, OR = 5.70). Thus, the epigenetically regulated ubiquitination machine plays an important role in immune aging and tumorigenesis.