Figure 2
From: Endothelial cell dysfunction and cardiac hypertrophy in the STOX1 model of preeclampsia
Protein-protein interaction network analysis.
The DEGs identified from the RNAseq analysis, with a fold change ≥1.5 were used as seeds to construct a network of interacting proteins. The interactions between the DEGs were extracted from the STRING data base and visualized using Cytoscape software (center). The network nodes represent genes and edges interactions. The gene expression levels were mapped on the network. Red indicates up-regulation and blue down-regulation. A zoom is presented on some clusters including: Interferon-induced genes, Myogenic genes, Mitochondrial modulators and genes involved in cell cycle regulation (which are in this case drastically reduced). The left-down frame presents a topological analysis of the network. The size of the nodes is proportional to the number of connections established with other genes. The color, from green to red, is a centrality measure (betweeness centrality, BC). The BC quantifies how drastically a gene influences the structure of the whole network. IL6 is the most central gene in the network and its expression is induced in the EC by placental STOX1 overexpression.
