Fig. 1: Overview of the analysis pipeline.

a The analysis pipeline of the microarray measurements from blood samples obtained from 127 patients enrolled in the AERIS study. After quality control filtering, the final dataset was composed of 585 microarray experiments corresponding to 112 patients. b A detail of the integrative multi-network approach to identify driving COPD genes and their associated biological functions. (§) The 14 defined multi-networks are: stable state and exacerbation (2 multi-networks); severity of airway obstruction at stable state (3 multi-networks) and at exacerbation (3 multi-networks); presence or absence of any bacteria at stable state (2 multi-networks) and at exacerbation (2 multi-networks); alternate occurrence of H. influenzae and M. catarrhalis infections at exacerbation (2 multi-networks). The 14 multi-networks used to perform the six comparisons of interest are described in detail in the Methods. COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, DEG differentially-expressed genes, GSEA gene set enrichment analysis, IQR interquartile range, MNGCD multi-network gene community detection, RBF radial basis function.