Miscellaneous (Black)
Read on for our selection of miscellaneous COVID-19-related studies from the scientific press for November 2022:
*Note – starting in December 2022 our monthly COVID-19 Breaking News articles will be published under the new name ‘COVID-19 Research Roundup’*
Integrated network-based multiple computational analyses for identification of co-expressed candidate genes associated with neurological manifestations of COVID-19
In this article the authors constructed a ‘tripartite network’ (TN) and ‘combined gene network’ (CGN) and their hub-bottleneck and driver nodes (44 genes) that were evaluated as ‘target genes’ (TG) to identify 21 ‘candidate genes’ (CG) and their relationship with neurological manifestations of COVID-19. TN was developed using neurological symptoms of COVID-19 found in literature. Under query genes (TG of TN), co-expressed genes were identified using pair-wise mutual information to genes available in RNA-Seq autopsy data of frontal cortex of COVID-19 victims. CGN was constructed with genes selected from TN and co-expressed in COVID-19. TG and their connecting genes of respective networks underwent functional analyses through findings of their enrichment terms and pairwise ‘semantic similarity scores’ (SSS). A new integrated ‘weighted harmonic mean score’ was formulated assimilating values of SSS and STRING-based ‘combined score’ of the selected TG-pairs, which provided CG-pairs with properties of CGs as co-expressed and ‘indispensable nodes’ in CGN. Finally, six pairs sharing seven ‘prevalent CGs’ (ADAM10, ADAM17, AKT1, CTNNB1, ESR1, PIK3CA, FGFR1) showed linkages with the phenotypes (a) directly under neurodegeneration, neurodevelopmental diseases, tumour/cancer and cellular signalling, and (b) indirectly through other CGs under behavioural/cognitive and motor dysfunctions. Furthermore, the pathophysiology of ‘prevalent CGs’ has been discussed by the authors to interpret neurological phenotypes of COVID-19.
Hazra S, Chaudhuri AG, Tiwary BK, Chakrabarti N. Integrated network-based multiple computational analyses for identification of co-expressed candidate genes associated with neurological manifestations of COVID-19. Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 13;12(1):17141. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-21109-3.
