Identification of the transcriptional regulators by expression profiling infected with hepatitis B virus

The molecular pathogenesis of infection by hepatitis B virus with human is extremely complex and heterogeneous. To date the molecular information is not clearly defined despite intensive research efforts. Thus, studies aimed at transcription and regulation during virus infection or combined researches of those already known to be beneficial are needed.

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.