Abstract
Molecular study of garlic as a popular food ingredient could better understand its health benefits such as immunological effects. For this aim, effects of garlic on the spleen and possible side effects including oxidative stress increment, the molecular mechanism is investigated through network analysis of differentially expressed genes in the treatment of garlic. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis of spleen gene expression profile of Mus musculus (8-week old male C57BL/6J mice) in garlic treatments from a microarray study with the code of GSE10344 was analyzed via GEO2R software. Furthermore, Cytoscape V 3.7.1 was applied to construct and analyze a network of up- and down-regulated genes. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were analyzed via the CluePedia plugin of Cytoscape to determine expression patterns. After the identification of central nodes, an action map was created. A total of 77 DEGs were achieved which were including 40 up-regulated and 37 Down-regulated. The centrality analysis of the network indicated that Vcan, Lamb1, and Ltbp1 are hubs and Glra1, Wdr17, Nefl, and Becn1 are bottlenecks. Mutual regulatory connections between hubs and Alb and App (as two non-queried hubs) were determined. The findings indicate that garlic effect on the spleen and its mechanism may be involved mostly with App dysregulation.