Network-based analysis reveals novel gene signatures in peripheral blood of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is currently the third leading cause of death and there is a huge unmet clinical need to identify disease biomarkers in peripheral blood. Compared to gene level differential expression approaches to identify gene signatures, network analyses provide a biologically intuitive approach which leverages the co-expression patterns in the transcriptome to identify modules of co-expressed genes.

Methods

A weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was applied to peripheral blood transcriptome from 238 COPD subjects to discover co-expressed gene modules. We then determined the relationship between these modules and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV₁). In a second, independent cohort of 381 subjects, we de

SUBMITTER: Obeidat M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5404332 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature