Discovering novel hub genes and pathways associated with the pathogenesis of psoriasis

In-depth analysis on the rambling genes of psoriasis may help to identify the pathologic mechanism of this disease. However, this has seldom been performed. Using bioinformatic approaches, we analyzed four gene expression profiles in gene expression omnibus (GEO) database, identified the differentially expressed genes (DEGs), and found out the overlapping DEGs (common DEGs, CDEGs) in the above four profiles. The CDEGs were further subjected to Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis, Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis, and hub genes were ranked. We identified 139 CDEGs associated with a variety of GO processes including keratinization, immune and inflammatory responses, and type 1 interferon signaling pathway. These CDEGs were enriched in a variety of KEGG processes, including cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction and chemokine signaling. PPI analysis showed that seven genes (HERC6, ISG15, MX1, RSAD2, OAS2, OASL, and OAS3) were likely the novel hub genes of psoriasis. RT-qPCR identified that five (ISG15, MX1, OAS2, OASL, and OAS3) of the seven predicted hub genes were overexpressed in TNF-α stimulated HaCaT cell lines, a result quite consistent with the predictions. The study provides new information in exploring the mechanisms and therapeutic targets of psoriasis.