The Effect of Exercise on Gene Expression and Signaling in Mouse Melanoma Tumors

To screen for candidate hub genes associated with the effects of exercise on melanoma tumor tissues and to review the potential signaling pathways involved in this process using bioinformatics analysis.

The GSE62628 expression profile was downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database. This data set contains 10 melanoma tumor tissues from two groups of exercise and nonexercise mice. The R software was utilized to identify differentially expressed genes between samples, and functional annotation and pathway analysis were performed. Results were visualized using Cytoscape software.

In total, 315 differentially expressed genes were obtained, including 294 upregulated and 21 downregulated genes. The functional analysis showed that these genes were mainly enriched in immune response, inflammatory response, and positive regulation of the ERK1/2 cascade in biological process functional groups. The top 10 candidate hub genes were C3, Kng1, C3ar1, Ptafr, Fgg, Alb, Pf4, Orm1, Aldh3b1, and Apob. The pathway analysis of the most significant module identified from the protein-protein interaction network revealed that the complement and coagulation cascades, Staphylococcus aureus infection, cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, chemokine signaling pathway and phagosome were mainly involved. C3, C3ar1, Kng1, Ptafr, and Fgg may be the critical genes in the complement and coagulation cascades pathway, and S. aureus in the infection pathway.

Exercise may ameliorate the immune response and inflammatory response in melanoma tissue, and further studies exploring their relationships are warranted.