ARPC3 and nonpapillary renal cell carcinoma: The potential functions of ARNTL2 in the ccRCC carcinogenesis was further explored, we employed R software “stat” package to identify ARNTL2 positively co-expressed genes, and the strongly co-expressed genes (spearman analysis, r > 0.70, p < 0.001) were selected to further analysis, as shown in Fig. 6a, b, the actin related protein 2/3 complex subunit 2 (ARPC2), guanine nucleotide binding protein beta polypeptide 4 (GNB4) and capping-protein muscle Z line alpha 1 (CAPZA1) were the only three positively co-expressed genes with spearman coefficient higher than 0.7 (p < 0.001).