With the purpose of identifying the transcriptional regulators related to infection of hepatitis B virus in gene level, the gene expression profiles from some normal individuals and hepatitis B patients were analyzed in our study.
In this work, the differential expressed genes were selected primarily. The several genes among those were validated in an independent set by qRT-PCR. Then the differentially co-expression analysis was conducted to identify differentially co-expressed links and differential co-expressed genes. Next, the analysis of the regulatory impact factors was performed through mapping the links and regulatory data. In order to give a further insight to these regulators, the co-expression gene modules were identified using a threshold-based hierarchical clustering method. Incidentally, the construction of the regulatory network was generated using the computer software.
A total of 137,284 differentially co-expressed links and 780 differential co-expressed genes were identified. These co-expressed genes were significantly enriched inflammatory response. The results of regulatory impact factors revealed several crucial regulators related to hepatocellular carcinoma and other high-rank regulators. Meanwhile, more than one hundred co-expression gene modules were identified using clustering method.
In our study, some important transcriptional regulators were identified using a computational method, which may enhance the understanding of disease mechanisms and lead to an improved treatment of hepatitis B. However, further experimental studies are required to confirm these findings.