On the other hand, FER1L4 was also characterized with association to gene set of cell adhesion molecules (Additional file 2: Fig. S5C). However, correlation analysis of thyroid cancer cohort from TCGA database suggested FER1L4 was positively correlated with P-cadherin (R2 = 0.2513, P < 0.001), but not E-cadherin, N-cadherin, or CDH4 (Additional file 2: Fig. S5E-H), which was consistent with the qRT-PCR results (Additional file 2: Fig. S3A). This evidence concerns the gene CDH4 and thyroid gland carcinoma.