Abstract
Endometriosis (EMS) is a disease that shows immune dysfunction and chronic inflammation characteristics, suggesting a role of complement system in its pathophysiology. To find out the hub genes and pathways involved in the pathogenesis of EMs, three raw microarray datasets were recruited from the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GEO). Then, a series of bioinformatics technologies including gene ontology (GO), Hallmark pathway enrichment, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and gene co-expression correlation analysis were performed to identify hub genes. The hub genes were further verified by the Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Western Blot (WB). We identified 129 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in EMs, of which 78 were up-regulated and 51 were down-regulated. Through GO functional enrichment analysis, we found that the DEGs are mainly enriched in cell adhesion, extracellular matrix remodeling, chemokine regulation, angiogenesis regulation, epithelial cell proliferation, et al. In Hallmark pathway enrichment analysis, coagulation pathway showed great significance and the terms in which included the central complement factors. Moreover, the genes were dominating in PPI network. Combined co-expression analysis with experimental verification, we found that the up-regulated expression of complement (C1S, C1QA, C1R, and C3) was positively related to tissue factor (TF) in EMs. In this study, we discovered the over expression complement and the positive correlation between complement and TF in EMs, which suggested that interaction of complement and coagulation system may play a role within the pathophysiology of EMS.