Bioinformatic Identification of Signaling Pathways and Hub Genes in Vascular Dementia

Background: Vascular dementia (VaD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative disease characterized by cognitive impairment due to cerebrovascular factors, affecting a significant portion of the aging population and highlighting the critical need to understand specific targets and mechanisms for effective prevention and treatment strategies. We aimed to identify pathways and crucial genes involved in the progression of VaD through bioinformatics analysis and subsequently validate these findings. Methods: We conducted differential expression analysis, Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis, and Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) analysis. We utilized pheochromocytoma 12 (PC12) cells to create an in vitro oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) model. We investigated the impact of overexpression and interference of adrenoceptor alpha 1D (ADRA1D) on OGD PC12 cells using TdT-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL), reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), western blot (WB), and Fluo-3-pentaacetoxymethyl ester (Fluo-3 AM) analysis. Results: We found 187 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the red module that were strongly associated with VaD and were primarily enriched in vasoconstriction, G protein-coupled amine receptor activity, and neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway, and cell adhesion. Among these pathways, we identified ADRA1D as a gene shared by vasoconstriction, G protein-coupled amine receptor activity, and neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction. The TUNEL assay revealed a significant decrease in PC12 cell apoptosis with ADRA1D overexpression (p < 0.01) and a significant increase in apoptosis upon silencing ADRA1D (p < 0.01). RT-qPCR and WB analysis revealed elevated ADRA1D expression (p < 0.001) ... (AU)

Proteomic-based studies on hypolipidemic mechanism of total phenylpropanoid glycosides from ligustrum robustum (roxb. ) blume in hyperlipidemic hamsters / 中国药理学通报

Aim To explore the hypolipidemic mechanism of the total phenylpropanoid glycoside from Ligustrum robustum (Roxb. ) Blume (LRTPG) on hyperlipidemic hamsters using label-free quantitative proteomic technique. Methods The total protein was extracted from livers of model group and the group treated with LRTPG for label-free quantitative proteomics research. Results The proteomic data showed that a total of 2231 proteins were identified. And 549 proteins were found to be differentially expressed between model group and group treated with LRTPG. Among the 549 proteins, 93 proteins were up-regulated and 59 proteins were down-regulated, and 397 proteins had quantitative values only in model group or drug-administered group. Further, gene ontology (GO) analysis indicated that those differentially expressed proteins were primarily involved in an array of biological processes including metabolism, transport, oxidation-reduction, phosphorylation, signal transduction and lipid metabolism. KEGG pathway analysis revealed that these proteins were involved in several signal pathways including oxidative phosphorylation, non-alcoholic fatty liver dis-ease, PI3K-Akt, cAMP, and cGMP-PKG pathway. And some of these proteins were much related to the lipid metabolism, such as CD36, PK, HSS, GCK, ApoA I, Acly and FABP5. Conclusion The hypolipidemic effect of LRTPG may be related to CD36, PK, HSS, GCK, ApoA I, Acly and FABP5.