Construction of NIM sub-network regulated by Liuwei Dihuang decoction and its characteristics

OBJECTIVE To construct the neuroendocrine immunomodulation(NIM) sub-network regulated by Liuwei Dihuang decoction(LW) and analyze its characteristics.METHODS We took the GSE57273 in GEO database and screened the differentially expressed genes(DEGs)(P<0.01) by the GEO2 R tool as gene expression signature of LW.The global PPI network was constructed in the context of whole PPI network through direct interaction algorithm and forest algorithm respectively.Then the enrichment and the topological characteristics of NIM signaling molecules were evaluated by permutation test.Finally,we abstracted the NIM sub-network by NIMNT,which combined the NIM molecular network and forest algorithm,and analyzed the topological characteristics of it by the Network Analyzer(release 2.7) plugin in Cytoscape v3.5.1.RESULTS We got 2468 DEGs in the gene expression signature of LW.After analyzing the global PPI network of LW got by two kinds of algorithms,we found that the NIM signaling molecules significantly enriched and located in important positions in the global PPI network.The NIM sub-network regulated by LW contained 1099 nodes and 1056 edges.We screened out 22 hub nodes(Degree>10).Among them,there were 19 NIM signaling molecules in which only ESR1 changed significantly and 3 non-DEGs(NFATC2,RARA,TP53).However,the down.stream of the hub nodes were significantly changes.CONCLUSION The results suggested that LW might mainly regulate the non-hub nodes to recovery of the network imbalance of the body in the state of disease.