We selected the first 8 highly expressed mitochondrial proteins that had not been validated in HCC (MY019, SLC25A19, MPV17, PIF1, DNA2, TOMMAOL, FLAD1 and FDPS) and validated them in 34 pairs of HCC tissues, which showed that MY019(FC ≈ 2.7), DNA2(FC ≈ 2.5), and FDPS(FC ≈ 1.7) were significantly overexpressed in HCC tissues (Fig 4B, P < 0.05). This evidence concerns the gene FLAD1 and hepatocellular carcinoma.