ABSTRACT
Background: Alzheimer's Disease [AD] is the most common form of dementia in the elderly. Due to the facts that biological causes of AD are complex in addition to increasing rates of AD worldwide, a deeper understanding of AD etiology is required for AD treatment and diagnosis
Methods: To identify molecular pathological alterations in AD brains, GSE36980 series containing microarray data samples from temporal cortex, frontal cortex and hippocampus were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus [GEO] database and valid gene symbols were subjected to building a gene co-expression network by a bioinformatics tool known as differential regulation from differential co-expression [DCGL] software package. Then, a network-driven integrative analysis was performed to find significant genes and underlying biological terms
Results: A total of 17088 unique genes were parsed into three independent differential co-expression networks. As a result, a small number of differentially co-regulated genes mostly in frontal and hippocampus lobs were detected as potential biomarkers related to AD brains. Ultimately differentially co-regulated genes were enriched in biological terms including response to lipid and fatty acid and pathways mainly signaling pathway such as G-protein signaling pathway and glutamate receptor groups II and III. By conducting co-expression analysis, our study identified multiple genes that may play an important role in the pathogenesis of AD
Conclusion: The study aimed to provide a systematic understanding of the potential relationships among these genes and it is hoped that it could aid in AD biomarker discovery