Differential expression of CircRNAs and mRNAs between ILAE-1 and no-HS tissues
To investigate molecular mechanisms in TLE-HS, hippocampus tissues obtained from six patients were tested and total RNA was isolated for whole transcriptome analysis with RNA sequencing. The clean reads were mapped to the human reference genome using TOPHAT and were spliced into putative transcripts. Bioinformatics analysis was performed to identify differentially expressed mRNAs and circRNAs between the HS ILAE type 1 and no-HS groups. Gene expression variation was visualized by the volcano plots, as shown in Fig. 1. Every point represents an mRNA or circRNA. 341 mRNAs (229 upregulated and 112 downregulated) and 131 circRNA (94 upregulated and 37 downregulated) were identified between two groups by using fold-change filtering (|log2(fold change)| > 1) and p value < 0.05. The most marked 10 upregulated and downregulated circRNAs of ILAE-1 compared with no-HS from our NGS results were listed in Table 1. The hierarchical cluster showed the overview of gene expression. The result showed that the expression of circRNAs and mRNAs were different between these two groups. The depth of colour represents the expression level of mRNAs and circRNAs; green represents and low red represents high(Fig. 2).
Table 1
Differentially expressed circRNAs of ILAE-1 compared with no-HS (top 10)
ID
|
P value
|
log2FC
|
Expression
|
hsa_circ_0045416
|
0.00021727
|
6.0721
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0074373
|
0.0010469
|
5.5506
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0032254
|
0.0010817
|
5.5397
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0069335
|
0.001317
|
5.4717
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0071174
|
0.0020681
|
5.3034
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0002480
|
0.0025103
|
5.2309
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0025349
|
0.0051062
|
4.9408
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0004805
|
0.0059354
|
4.8826
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0002405
|
0.0065563
|
4.8414
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0073717
|
0.0084533
|
4.7303
|
Up
|
hsa_circ_0045006
|
0.0044953
|
-5.0338
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0031632
|
0.0072807
|
-4.8554
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0092238
|
0.0080996
|
-4.7722
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0032875
|
0.0083046
|
-4.795
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0008700
|
0.011015
|
-4.6299
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0061291
|
0.015531
|
-4.4809
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0013092
|
0.015681
|
-4.4821
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0064759
|
0.018925
|
-4.375
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0068390
|
0.01951
|
-4.3579
|
Down
|
hsa_circ_0057523
|
0.020062
|
-4.3427
|
Down
|
Function analysis of differentially expressed mRNAs involving ILAE-1 and no-HS tissues
We performed GO and KEGG pathway analysis of differentially expressed mRNAs between these two groups. The top 30 GO terms were performed based on three categories: the cellular component (CC), molecular function (MF), and biological process (BP). For the BP group, the most meaningful GO terms were vesicle-mediated transport(Fig. 2A). For the MF group, the main represented GO term was protein binding(Fig. 2B). For the CC group, the main represented category was cytosol(Fig. 2C). The KEGG pathways were listed in the Fig. 2D, and the pathway of MAPK signaling contained most of genes.
To further elucidate the functional relationship among different expression genes(DEGs), a protein–protein interaction network was generated with the STRING online database using a combined scoring method. A total of 441 known or predicted interactions were formed among 211 DEGs(PPI enrichment p-value = 7.83e-08). Subsequently, the PPI network was constructed using Cytoscape software(Fig. 3A). MCODE plugin was used to identify the modules in the network; modules including at least 10 nodes were selected.(Fig. 3B-C). Further, GO and KEGG analyses of the modules were demonstrated by ClueGo/CluePedia plugin. There were mainly four functional modules enriched: ER to Golgi transport vesicle membrane, GABA-gated chloride ion channel activity, CENP-A containing nucleosome assembly, Basal transcription factors. (Figure S2).
Construction of a co-expression network
To date, the functions of most circRNAs have not been determined. Therefore, we constructed a circRNA-mRNA co-expression network to identify the critical circRNA in HS ILAE type 1(Fig. 4). The candidates to validate were chosen based on the following criteria: |log2(fold change)| > 4and P-value < 0.01. A total of 14 DE-circRNAs (4 down-regulated and 10 up-regulated) and 42 DE-mRNAs (8 down-regulated and 34 up-regulated) were selected. There were seven hub nodes were identified in the co-expressed network, which included five circRNAs (hsa_circ_0025349, hsa_circ_0002405, hsa_circ_0004805, hsa_circ_0032254, and hsa_circ_0032875) and three mRNAs (FYN, SELENBP1, and GRIPAP1).
Validation of dysregulated circRNAs and the corresponding mRNAs between ILAE-1 and no-HS tissues.
To validate the results of the RNA-seq, we chose a total of five circRNAs (hsa_circ_0025349, hsa_circ_0002405, hsa_circ_0004805, hsa_circ_0032254, and hsa_circ_0032875) and three mRNAs (FYN, SELENBP1, and GRIPAP1) for further RT-PCR. The expression of hsa_circ_0025349, hsa_circ_0002405, hsa_circ_0004805, hsa_circ_0032254, FYN, SELENBP1 were significantly upregulated in the 7 ILAE-1 and 7 no-HS samples. The expression of hsa_circ_0032875, GRIPAP1 were significantly downregulated in the 10 ILAE-1 and 10 no-HS samples(Fig. 5). For all eight selected targets, the expression results calculated by the RT-PCR analysis were identical to those found by RNA-Seq, confirming the reliability of the RNA-Seq results.