Identification of major hub genes involved in high-fat diet-induced obese visceral adipose tissue based on bioinformatics approach

ABSTRACT

High-fat diet (HFD) can cause obesity, inducing dysregulation of the visceral adipose tissue (VAT). This study aimed to explore potential biological pathways and hub genes involved in obese VAT, and for that, bioinformatic analysis of multiple datasets was performed. The expression profiles (GSE30247, GSE167311 and GSE79434) were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus. Overlapping differentially expressed genes (ODEGs) between normal diet and HFD groups in GSE30247 and GSE167311 were selected to run protein–protein interaction network, GO and KEGG analysis. The hub genes in ODEGs were screened by Cytoscape software and further verified in GSE79434 and obese mouse model. A total of 747 ODEGs (599 up-regulated and 148 down-regulated) were screened, and the GO and KEGG analysis showed that the up-regulated ODEGs were significantly enriched in inflammatory response and extracellular matrix receptor interaction pathways. On the other hand, the down-regulated ODEGs were involved in metabolic pathways; however, there were no significant KEGG pathways. Furthermore, six hub genes, Mki67, Rac2, Itgb2, Emr1, Tyrobp and Csf1r were acquired. These pathways and genes were verified in GSE79434 and VAT of obese mice. This study revealed that HFD induced VAT expansion, inflammation and fibrosis, and the hub genes could be used as therapeutic biomarkers in obesity.

KEYWORDS:

• Obesity
• high-fat diet
• visceral adipose tissue
• bioinformatics analysis
• inflammation
• fibrosis
• biomarker

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank MogoEdit (https://www.mogoedit.com) for its English editing during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Institutional review board statement

The animal procedures were conducted following the China National Standards and Guidelines for Laboratory Animal Management and were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Southeast University (No.: 20200326003).

Data availability statement

All of the data are presented in the manuscript.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/21623945.2023.2169227

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number NSFC 81770452].