Identification of Potential Gene Signatures Related to Sleep Deprivation

This study aimed to identify possible therapeutic targets involved in sleep deprivation (SD) risks. GSE77393 data set was acquired from Gene Expression Omnibus database. Functional analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis were used to extract the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between two SD samples and control samples. Moreover, submodule network with the same function was further extracted and the functional enrichment analysis of corresponding genes was carried out. Afterward, the transcriptional regulation analysis and drug-gene interaction were also carried out to identify the essential genes associated with SD susceptibility. Totally, 121 DEGs, including 90 consistently upregulated DEGs and 31 downregulated DEGs, were screened and the results of functional analysis indicated that upregulated genes were related to learning or memory and response to drug, whereas downregulated DEGs were mainly responsible for response to UV and cell differentiation. Moreover, PPI network and submodule analysis revealed that many key genes (FOS and BDNF) were hub genes and the KEGG enrichment analysis found that these genes such as FOS and BDNF were considerably enriched in pathways such as MAPK signaling pathway, HTLV-I infection, and Hepatitis B. In addition, two genes (FOS and BDNF) with a higher degree were found to be key regulators and play important roles in the transcriptional regulator network and drug-gene interactions, suggesting that these two genes were associated with SD development. FOS and BDNF might be served as the potential targets for SD treatment.