Fig. 1

Lower NAT1 expression is associated with a poorer prognosis in CRC patients. A Identification of differential expressed genes (DEGs) through RNA sequencing between adjacent normal tissues (N = 10) and CRC tumor tissues (N = 10). Genes with a fold change (FC) ≥ 2 and a P-value ≤ 0.05 were designated as DEGs using the R package "limma-voom". B Kaplan–Meier analysis of overall survival, disease-free survival, and progression-free survival was used to compare the prognosis of CRC patients based on the optimal cut-off value of NAT1 expression level. Log-rank test was used to calculate the P value. C In both the TCGA-COAD (N = 458 tumor, N = 41 normal) and TCGA-READ (N = 168 tumor, N = 10 normal) datasets, NAT1 expression was significantly down-regulated in tumor tissues compared to normal tissues, as determined by unpaired t-tests. D and E The down-regulation of NAT1 in CRC tumor tissues (n = 10) compared to adjacent normal tissues (n = 10) was validated using in-house RNA sequencing, as assessed by paired t-test. Similarly, qRT-PCR analysis confirmed the down-regulation of NAT1 in CRC tumor tissues (n = 20) compared to adjacent normal tissues (n = 20), also evaluated by paired t-test