Identification of potential hub genes associated with skin wound healing based on time course bioinformatic analyses
Abstract The skin is the largest organ of the body and has many functions. Skin wound has become a significant healthcare problem due to the increasing number of trauma and pathophysiological conditions. In an attempt to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of wound healing (WH), gene expression profiles of 37 biopsies collected from patients undergoing split-thickness skin graft at five different time points were downloaded from two data sets (GSE28914 and GSE50425) in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. According to the principal component analysis, the collected samples were divided into four phases, which are intact phase, acute wound phase, inflammation phase and remodelling phase. Subsequently, different expression genes, Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway functional enrichment analyses and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were performed in each phase. Furthermore, based on the PPI results, hub genes in each phase were identified by Molecular Complex Detection combined with ClueGO algorithm. This comprehensive bioinformatic re-analysis of GEO data provides new insights into the molecular pathogenesis of WH and the potential identification of therapeutic targets for the treatment of WH.