Systematic Analysis of Integrated Gene Functional Network of Four Chronic Stress-related Lifestyle Disorders

Stress is a term used to define factors involved in changes in the physiological balances resulting in disease conditions. Chronic exposure to stress conditions in modern lifestyles has resulted in a group of disorders called lifestyle disorders. Genetic background and environmental factors are interrelated to lifestyle in determining the health status of individuals. Hence, identification of disease-associated genes is the primary step toward explanations of pathogenesis of these diseases. In functional genomics, large-scale molecular and physiological data are used for the identification of causative genes associated with a disease.

The objective of our study was to find a common set of genes involved in chronic stress-related lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), type 2 diabetes (T2D), hypertension (HTN), and obesity.

In our study, we have performed a systematic analysis of the functional gene network of four chronic stress-related lifestyle diseases by retrieving genes from published databases. We have tried to systematically construct a functional protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. The goals of establishing this network were the functional enrichment study of interacting partners as well as functional disease ontology annotation (FunDO) of the enriched genes.

This study enabled the identification of key genes involved in these stress-related lifestyle diseases by prioritizing candidate genes based on their degree of involvement. In this systematic analysis, we have found key genes for these diseases based on their involvement and association at the gene network level and PPI.

We have deciphered a group of genes that in combination play a crucial role and may impact the function of the whole genome in the four lifestyle disorders mentioned.