The result of western blotting indicated that the protein level of p-ERK-1/2 was significantly decreased after the overexpression of ThPOK and STPG1 in gastric cancer cells, and the ratio of p-ERK-1/2 to ERK-1/2 also showed a significant decrease in gastric cancer cells (Fig. 5c–f). All original western blot images were provided in Additional file 2. The gene discussed is MAPK3; the disease is gastric cancer.