Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 29, 2025
Evaluation of Hepatic Glucose Production in a Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Mouse Model
Published on: March 5, 2022
Graph cluster approach in identifying novel proteins and significant pathways involved in polycystic ovary syndrome
Nor Afiqah-Aleng1, M Altaf-Ul-Amin2, Shigehiko Kanaya2
1Centre for Bioinformatics Research, Institute of Systems Biology (INBIOSIS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia; Institute of Marine Biotechnology, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia.
Research Question:
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a complex endocrine disorder with diverse clinical implications, such as infertility, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases and psychological problems among others. The heterogeneity of conditions found in PCOS contribute to its various phenotypes, leading to difficulties in identifying proteins involved in this abnormality. Several studies, however, have shown the feasibility in identifying molecular evidence underlying other diseases using graph cluster analysis. Therefore, is it possible to identify proteins and pathways related to PCOS using the same approach?
Methods:
Known PCOS-related proteins (PCOSrp) from PCOSBase and DisGeNET were integrated with protein-protein interactions (PPI) information from Human Integrated Protein-Protein Interaction reference to construct a PCOS PPI network. The network was clustered with DPClusO algorithm to generate clusters, which were evaluated using Fisher's exact test. Pathway enrichment analysis using gProfileR was conducted to identify significant pathways.
Results:
The statistical significance of the identified clusters has successfully predicted 138 novel PCOSrp with 61.5% reliability and, based on Cronbach's alpha, this prediction is acceptable. Androgen signalling pathway and leptin signalling pathway were among the significant PCOS-related pathways corroborating the information obtained from the clinical observation, where androgen signalling pathway is responsible in producing male hormones in women with PCOS, whereas leptin signalling pathway is involved in insulin sensitivity.
Conclusions:
These results show that graph cluster analysis can provide additional insight into the pathobiology of PCOS, as the pathways identified as statistically significant correspond to earlier biological studies. Therefore, integrative analysis can reveal unknown mechanisms, which may enable the development of accurate diagnosis and effective treatment in PCOS.
