Cervical cancer (CC) holds the second highest incidence and is the fourth dominating cause of cancer‐induced death in women. It has been widely accepted that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are implicated in pathological and physiological activities of CC. However, the research of lncRNAs is still in the initial stage. The biological function of lncRNA deoxyguanosine kinase antisense RNA 1 (DGUOK‐AS1) in human cancers has not been reported yet. We found that DGUOK‐AS1 was aberrantly upregulated in cervical squamous cell carcinoma and endocervical adenocarcinoma (CESC) tissues through TCGA database. Real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT‐qPCR) also verified the high expression of DGUOK‐AS1 in CC cell lines. Loss‐of‐function assays indicated that DGUOK‐AS1 silence repressed CC cell growth. In addition, dual‐luciferase reporter and RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) experiments validated the binding relation between miR‐653‐5p and DGUOK‐AS1 or EMSY. Results of the rescue assays elucidated that EMSY overexpression or miR‐653‐5p downregulation reversed the suppressive function of DGUOK‐AS1 knockdown on cell growth and DNA repair in CC. To sum up, this research highlighted that DGUOK‐AS1 could promote CC cell proliferation via serving as a ceRNA of miR‐653‐5p to release EMSY, which might inspire us to discover novel strategies for CC treatment.

中文翻译：

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DGUOK-AS1通过充当miR-653-5p的ceRNA促进宫颈癌中的细胞增殖

宫颈癌（CC）发病率第二高，是妇女因癌症死亡的第四大主要原因。长的非编码RNA（lncRNA）参与CC的病理和生理活动已被广泛接受。但是，lncRNAs的研究仍处于起步阶段。尚未报道lncRNA脱氧鸟苷激酶反义RNA 1（DGUOK-AS1）在人类癌症中的生物学功能。通过TCGA数据库，我们发现DGUOK-AS1在宫颈鳞状细胞癌和宫颈内膜腺癌（CESC）组织中异常上调。实时定量聚合酶链反应（RT-qPCR）也证实了DGUOK-AS1在CC细胞系中的高表达。功能丧失分析表明DGUOK-AS1沉默抑制了CC细胞的生长。此外，双荧光素酶报告基因和RNA免疫沉淀（RIP）实验验证了miR-653-5p与DGUOK-AS1或EMSY之间的结合关系。救援测定的结果表明，EMSY的过表达或miR-653-5p的下调逆转了DGUOK-AS1敲低对CC细胞生长和DNA修复的抑制作用。总而言之，这项研究强调了DGUOK-AS1可以通过充当miR-653-5p的ceRNA释放EMSY来促进CC细胞增殖，这可能会激发我们发现CC治疗的新策略。