Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 20 pp 8243—8257
Network analysis for the identification of hub genes and related molecules as potential biomarkers associated with the differentiation of bone marrow-derived stem cells into hepatocytes
- 1 College of Life Science and Technology, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University, Daqing 163319, Heilongjiang, P.R. China
- 2 Functional Biomaterial Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Jeongeup-Si 56212, Jeonbuk, Republic of Korea
- 3 Department of Applied Biological Engineering, KRIBB School of Biotechnology, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34113, Republic of Korea
- 4 Primate Resources Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), Jeongeup-Si 56216, Jeonbuk, Republic of Korea
- 5 Department of Functional Genomics, KRIBB School of Bioscience, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34113, Republic of Korea
Received: May 13, 2022 Accepted: October 5, 2022 Published: October 20, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204344How to Cite
Copyright: © 2022 Han et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The incidence of liver diseases has been increasing steadily. However, it has some shortcomings, such as high cost and organ donor scarcity. The application of stem cell research has brought new ideas for the treatment of liver diseases. Therefore, it is particularly important to clarify the molecular and regulatory mechanisms of differentiation of bone marrow-derived stem cells (BMSCs) into liver cells. Herein, we screened differentially expressed genes between hepatocytes and untreated BMSCs to identify the genes responsible for the differentiation of BMSCs into hepatocytes. GSE30419 gene microarray data of BMSCs and GSE72088 gene microarray data of primary hepatocytes were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Transcriptome Analysis Console software showed that 1896 genes were upregulated and 2506 were downregulated in hepatocytes as compared with BMSCs. Hub genes were analyzed using the STRING and Cytoscape v 3.8.2, revealing that twenty-four hub genes, play a pivotal role in the differentiation of BMSCs into hepatocytes. The expression of the hub genes in the BMSCs and hepatocytes was verified by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). Next, the target miRNAs of hub genes were predicted, and then the lncRNAs regulating miRNAs was discovered, thus forming the lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA interaction chain. The results indicate that the lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA interaction chain may play an important role in the differentiation of BMSCs into hepatocytes, which provides a new therapeutic target for liver disease treatment.