Global analysis of circRNA-associated ceRNA network for investigating underlying pathogenesis of constrictive pericarditis (RNA-Seq)

Purpose:The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential mechanisms that triggering the onset of constrictive pericarditis and to screen hub genes that exert impact on pathogenesis of patients with constrictive pericarditis. Methods: We screened differentially expressed genes with the data obtained from RNA-seq on CP samples and matched normal samples. Functional annotation analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were performed to investigate the potential key pathways and genes that play significant roles in CP. Furthermore, the ceRNA network was established and the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) was executed to dig key circRNAs. Results: Following the identification of differentially expressed genes, functional annotation analysis was conducted, suggesting that differentially expressed mRNAs (DEMs) were mainly involved in inflammatory response related pathways. The top 11 genes with the highest degree were extracted from PPI network. A total of 377 predicted regulatory relationships among the differentially expressed genes were found and the ceRNA network was established. Finally, GSEA was conducted on the circRNAs and the key biological pathways were identified. Conclusion: Our study is the pioneering research to analyze the pathogenesis of CP with integrated informatics and we have identified several hub genes, which reveals that the generation of CP is closely related to inflammation and fibrosis. Overall design: Pericardial RNA profiles of three test and three control samples were generated by deep sequencing, using Illumina HiSeq 4000.