To date, 23 PATs, also known as ZDHHC proteins, expressed in mammalian cells have been discovered. Given that the function of ZDHHC in LUAD tumorigenesis is variable, we reasoned that finding suitable ZDHHC is important for studying the modulatory mechanisms of palmitoylation. To identify potential ZDHHC targets in LUAD, we analyzed the RNA-seq data from TCGA database to compare differentially expressed genes between LUAD cases and normal lung tissues. As shown in Figure 1A, 12 ZDHHCs were significantly upregulated in LUAD, and 7 ZDHHCs were significantly downregulated (fold change > 1, P < 0.05). We further interrogated MS-based proteomic data from the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) Confirmatory/Discovery cohorts to investigate ZDHHC expression at the protein level, and identified 9 upregulated and 2 downregulated (fold change > 1, P < 0.05) ZDHHCs (Figure 1B). Heat maps (Figure 1C) showed the hazard ratio (HR) of 23 ZDHHCs in LUAD based on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) results. We found that high expression of ZDHHC5 and ZDHHC15 was associated with an unfavorable prognosis and a favorable outcome, respectively. To our surprise, ZDHHC5 was the only ZDHHC with differential expression and prognostic value in LUAD (Figure 1D).
