Gene microarray analysis of expression profiles in liver ischemia and reperfusion
- Authors:
- Published online on: July 13, 2017 https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2017.6966
- Pages: 3299-3307
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Copyright: © Zheng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License.
Abstract
Introduction
Liver ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is caused by blood deprivation and subsequent reperfusion. It caused the release of biological mediators contributing to liver dysfunction eventually (1). Although Liver IR injury is a main complication of hemorrhagic shock, resection and transplantation, its mechanisms haven't been described adequately (2). The pathophysiology of liver I/R injury may include ATP depletion, caused by decrease in oxidative phosphorylation, ROS (reactive oxygen species) creation, cytokines and chemokines production by kupffer cells, neutrophil accumulation, nitric oxide, apoptosis and necrosis (3). For example, liver I/R can induce Kupffer cell activation releasing TNF α. The increasing serum TNF α levels resulted in not only liver injury but also remote organ insult (4). Effects on hepatic secretory function and microsomal drug metabolizing systems varied in duration of ischemia or reperfusion. These may be related to lipid peroxidation rise (5). A lot of research suggested that liver I/R injury was age-dependent, which may be associated with neutrophil recruitment and function or NF-kB activation (6,7). The age-related mechanism of NF-κB activation in liver I/R injury could be related to recruitment of phosphorylated and ubiquitinylated NF-κB-inhibitoryprotein, IκBα, to the proteasome. This biological process can be stopped by expression decline of proteasome subunit, non-ATPase 4 (PSMD4) (8). Many methods and drugs had been applied to ameliorate liver I/R injury (9–11). Blood supply restoration was a primary step to treat ischemia damage in clinical work. But reperfusion itself may exacerbate organ injury induced by ischemia alone. Many therapeutic strategies should be considered when applied to reduce tissue injury (12). Nowadays, pathways, pivotal genes or cellular functions about liver ischemia and reperfusion, have not been demonstrated clearly. In order to explore more theoretical information about I/R injury precaution and treatment, we tried to compare different molecular mechanisms between liver ischemia followed by reperfusion and ischemia alone.
Materials and methods
Microarray data
Gene expression profile dataset GSE10657 was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GEO, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/), including 30 liver tissue samples (8). The annotation platform was GPL1261 [Mouse430_2] Affymetrix Mouse Genome 430 2.0 Array. A total of 30 liver tissue samples were collected for analysis of whole mouse genome microarrays. We selected the data of two groups (ischemia of 90 min and 90 min of ischemia followed by 1 h of reperfusion) from 1-year-old mice. Each group included 3 mice.
Data processing
The expression data were processed using the R package limma in Bioconductor (http://www.bioconductor.org/), including background correction, quantile normalization, log2 transformed and final probe summarization (13,14). We compared the gene expression of two groups of one-year old mice (ischemia of 90 min and 90 min of ischemia followed by 1 h of reperfusion). The criterion for differentially expressed genes (DEGs) are adjusted P-value < 0.05 and |log2fold-change (FC)|≥1.
Function annotation and KEGG pathway analysis
To explore the biological function of DEGs, we uploaded the target genes to the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) (https://david-d.ncifcrf.gov/). Gene Ontology (GO) annotation (15) associated with biological process (BP) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) (16) pathway enrichment analysis were utilized to analyze the function and potential pathways of these DEGs. The P-value <0.05 and gene counts >2 were criteria of the both.
PPI network construction
We aimed to identify the possible interaction networks of DEGs by using STRING version 10.0, which covers over 2,000 organisms and provides direct (physical) and indirect (functional) associations (17). DEGs were put in STRING database to construct a PPI network. The confidence score for selection was ≥0.4. Cytoscape (http://www.cytoscape.org/) software was used to dispose the PPI network for visualization.
Results
Gene expression analysis
After comparing sample records from 1-year-old mice subjected to different conditions (90 min of ischemia followed by 1 h of reperfusion or ischemia of 90 min) (n=3 each group), 114 DEGs were selected to further analysis with the standard of|log2fold change (FC)|≥1 and adjusted P-values <0.05. (Table I and Fig. 1) Among the DEGs, 21 genes were downregulated, while another 93 were upregulated. Cyp4a14, Igsf6 and Cacna1 s were most notably changed of the 21 downregulated genes. Hspa1a, Il6, Hspa1b, Moxd1, Fos, S100a8, Atf3, S100a9, Thbs1 and Btg2 were the top ten increased of the 93 DEGs.
GO analysis and KEGG pathway
According to function annotation, the most significant biological processes included immune response (GO:0006955, P=1.37E-05), leukocyte migration involved in inflammatory response (GO:0002523, P=1.48E-05), inflammatory response (GO:0006954, P=5.96E-05), skeletal muscle cell differentiation (GO:0035914, P=1.08E-04), chemotaxis (GO:0006935, P=1.82E-04), response to lipopolysaccharide (GO:0032496, P=3.58E-04), positive regulation of transcription from RNA polymerase II promoter (GO:0045944, P=4.11E-04), and positive regulation of apoptotic process (GO:0043065, P=4.96E-04) (Table II and Fig. 2).
As for highly enriched pathways, TNF signaling pathway (P=1.57E-06), Malaria (P=5.41E-06), Influenza A (P=3.28E-05), and MAPK signaling pathway (P=3.72E-04) were detected (Table III).
Interaction network construction
All 114 DEGs were put in the String database. A PPI network included 94 nodes and 145 edges was constructed. We analyzed the network by Cytoscape. (Fig. 3) To get more useful information, PPI sub-networks were generated. Nodes with edges more than 6 were CCL2, JUN, CYR61, DUSP1, KLF6, BTG2, ZFP36, IL6, CXCL1, JUNB, NFKBIZ, MAFF, FOS, EGR2 and ATF3 (Fig. 4). Genes with interaction combined-score ≥0.9 were selected to form a PPI sub-network (Fig. 5). Hub proteins were FOS, CCL2, CXCL1, JUN, IL6 and DUSP1, all of which were upregulated.
Discussion
In the current study, 114 DEGs were recognized in the liver tissue from two groups of 1-year-old mice. The expression was significantly different between 90 min of ischemia and 90 min of ischemia followed by 1 h of reperfusion. Based on the pathway enrichment analysis, most DEGs enriched in immune response, leukocyte migration involved in inflammatory response, and inflammatory response, including genes like CXCL1, PLSCR1, IL6, CCL2, PROCR, PPBP, VPREB2, VPREB1, PF4, S100A8, S100A9, NFKBIZ, THBS1, and SELE. TNF signaling pathway and MAPK signaling pathway were recognized with highest count and low P-value. In PPI network, CXCL1, CCL2, IL6, JUN, FOS and DUSP1 were hub proteins.
In our results, the expression of CXCL1 and IL6 increased rapidly in 90 min of ischemia followed by 1 h of reperfusion, suggesting that reperfusion could induce severer damage or more organs dysfunction. CXCL1, also known as GRO-α, could be a therapeutic target with further research. For instance, depletion of CXCL1 can lessen angiogenesis activity and reduce tumor growth. AS a member of the CXC chemokine family, it involved in recruitment of leukocytes and their migration, and many other inflammatory conditions (18). Gomez-Rodriguez et al (19) discovered that the expression of CXCL1 can be regulated by MMP-10. The latter was necessary for tissue repair by inhibiting CXCL1. In vivo, pre-emptive hypoxia-regulated Haem oxygenase-1 (pHRE-HO-1) could reduce the level of IL6 and CXCL. It was helpful for tissue regeneration and thus alleviating critical limb ischemia injury (20). Ahuja et al (21) first proved that serum IL6 had an essential role in AKI-mediated lung neutrophil accumulation and lung injury by stimulating CXCL1 production in lung, which indicated that inhibition of CXCL1 may be a possible therapy of lung injury after AKI. Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) had a significant effect on I/R- and endotoxin-induced acute hepatocyte injury. When suppressing the function of HSCs, the expression of TNF α, neutrophil chemoattractant CXCL1 and endothelin-A receptor were all decreased (22).
Our study also identified that CCL2 was upregulated in I/R group. It might indicate that reperfusion could aggravate inflammation reaction. Much research had tried to confirm the relationship between CCL2 and inflammation. For example, CCL2-CCR2 signaling could accelerate liver I/R injury, for the reason that CCL2 attracted inflammatory monocytes and CCR2-expressing neutrophil to move into liver from bone marrow (23). Heil et al (24) stated that CCL2, was related to the accumulation of macrophages in growing collateral vessels. In mouse femoral artery excision model, CCL2 and CCR2, played an important role in post-ischemic regenerative processes of skeletal muscle (25). CCL2/CCR2 dominated post-ischemic vessel growth (26). Zhang et al (27) found that in retinal vascular inflammation, the production of CCL2 required NAD (P) H oxidase activity.
The other three key genes in this study are JUN, FOS and DUSP1. Expression of FOS and DUSP1 were substantially elevated in stroke patients (28).
We analyzed the gene microarray data from a new point, the damage of reperfusion per se, while Huber et al (8) studied liver I/R injury emphasizing on the impact of age. There were some limitations of our study. Firstly, for the lack of preconditioning data, we can't continue to mine biological function under the circumstance of precondition or other more relations. Kapoor et al (29) proposed that liver ischemic preconditioning activated MAPK signaling pathway, permitting hepatocytes to sustain secondary damage. Oyaizu et al (30) suggested that in rat pulmonary ischemia-reperfusion models, Src PTK activation was the major reason for reperfusion-induced lung injury but not gene expression alteration. Secondly, GSE10657 only consisted of reperfusion data of one time point. We couldn't compare gene expression changes between different time points of reperfusion.
In conclusion, our study provides supplementary evidence for the hypothesis that Reperfusion itself creates injury during liver I/R. We identified 114 DEGs between Reperfusion following Ischemia and Ischemia alone. CXCL1, CCL2, IL6, JUN, FOS and DUSP1 were key genes in I/R injury. These genes may be the potential therapeutic target. However, more experimental researches are needed to verify.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by The Natural Scientific Foundation of Guangdong Province (2016A030313255) and The Foundation of Sun Yat-sen University for Young Teachers (16ykpy36).
Glossary
Abbreviations
Abbreviations:
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I/R |
ischemia and reperfusion |
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DEGs |
differentially expressed genes |
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DAVID |
Database for Annotation Visualization and Integrated Discovery |
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PPI |
Protein-protein interaction network |
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GEO |
network Gene Expression Omnibus database |
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GO |
Gene Ontology |
|
BP |
biological process |
|
KEGG |
Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes |
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