Identification of Ferroptosis-Related Genes in Alzheimer's Disease Based on Bioinformatic Analysis.

Ying Wang,Guohua Chen,Wei Shao

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.823741

Ying Wang, Guohua Chen + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.823741

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Abstract

IntroductionAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent cause of dementia, and emerging evidence suggests that ferroptosis is involved in the pathological process of AD.Materials and MethodsThree microarray datasets (GSE122063, GSE37263, and GSE140829) about AD were collected from the GEO database. AD-related module genes were identified through a weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). The ferroptosis-related genes were extracted from FerrDb. The apoptosis-related genes were downloaded from UniProt as a control to show the specificity of ferroptosis. The overlap was performed to obtain the module genes associated with ferroptosis and apoptosis. Then the Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses and the protein-protein interaction (PPI) were conducted. Cytoscape with CytoHubba was used to identify the hub genes, and the Logistic regression was performed to distinguish the AD patients from controls.Results53 ferroptosis-related module genes were obtained. The GO analysis revealed that response to oxidative stress and starvation, and multicellular organismal homeostasis were the most highly enriched terms. The KEGG analysis showed that these overlapped genes were enriched not only in renal cell carcinoma pathways and central carbon metabolism in cancer, but also in autophagy-related pathways and ferroptosis. Ferroptosis-related hub genes in AD (JUN, SLC2A1, TFRC, ALB, and NFE2L2) were finally identified, which could distinguish AD patients from controls (P < 0.05). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.643. Apoptosis-related hub genes in AD (STAT1, MCL1, and BCL2L11) were also identified and also could distinguish AD patients from controls (P < 0.05). The AUC was 0.608, which was less than the former AUC value, suggesting that ferroptosis was more special than apoptosis in AD.ConclusionWe identified five hub genes (JUN, SLC2A1, TFRC, ALB, and NFE2L2) that are closely associated with ferroptosis in AD and can differentiate AD patients from controls. Three hub genes of apoptosis-related genes in AD (STAT1, MCL1, and BCL2L11) were also identified as a control to show the specificity of ferroptosis. JUN, SLC2A1, TFRC, ALB, and NFE2L2 are thus potential ferroptosis-related biomarkers for disease diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring.

Highlights

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent cause of dementia, and emerging evidence suggests that ferroptosis is involved in the pathological process of AD
Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent lipid peroxidation-driven cell death, and emerging evidence suggests that it is involved in the pathological process of AD (Lane et al, 2018; Weiland et al, 2019)
It is generally accepted that massive neuronal death due to apoptosis is a common characteristic in the brains of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, and apoptotic cell death has been found in neurons and glial cells in AD (Shimohama, 2000; Sharma et al, 2021)

Summary

Introduction

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent cause of dementia, and emerging evidence suggests that ferroptosis is involved in the pathological process of AD. Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent lipid peroxidation-driven cell death, and emerging evidence suggests that it is involved in the pathological process of AD (Lane et al, 2018; Weiland et al, 2019). Several characteristics of the pathogenesis of AD were consistent with those of ferroptosis, such as excess iron accumulation, being recognized as a unique cell death mechanism participating elevated lipid peroxides Apoptosis is the spontaneous and orderly death of cells, which involves the activation, expression and regulation of a series of genes, and it is a biological process that plays an essential role in normal physiology (Obulesu and Lakshmi, 2014). It is generally accepted that massive neuronal death due to apoptosis is a common characteristic in the brains of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, and apoptotic cell death has been found in neurons and glial cells in AD (Shimohama, 2000; Sharma et al, 2021)

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