BMAL2 and nonpapillary renal cell carcinoma: Three independent datasets from GEO database were utilized to externally illustrate the expression of ARNTL2 in ccRCC, which also demonstrated the highly expressed of ARNTL2 at the transcriptional level in ccRCC (Fig. 1d, e), and increased expression of ARNTL2 significantly associated with the advanced ccRCC clinical stage (Fig. 1f, Table 1) and tumor histologic grade (Table 1), while not significantly associated with age and gender.