Identification of apoptosis-related biomarkers of apoptosis in pulpitis based on biological informatics

Abstract

Background Pulpitis (PPS) is a dental disease caused by the destruction of dental hard tissue around the dental pulp. Studies have confirmed that apoptosis has a role in the production of PPS. Hence, it was vital to screen apoptosis related biomarkers for PPS. Methods To identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in GSE77459, we conducted a differential expression analysis (normal versus PPS). Then, apoptosisrelated differential expression genes (AR-DEGs) were got via overlapping DEGs and apoptosis related genes (ARGs). The five algorithms of cytoHubba in protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were applied to screen apoptosis related biomarkers. Subsequently, we further conducted gene functional enrichment and immune microenvironment analyses for these biomarkers. We finally verified the expression in clinical tissue samples by RT-qPCR. Results A sum of 4,089 DEGs were obtained between PPS and normal groups. Soon afterwards, 19AR-DEGs were screened by the intersection of DEGs and ARGs. Moreover, we got 5 apoptosis related biomarkers via five machine learning algorithms, including TNFSF10, BIRC3, IL1A, NFKBIA and CASP10.We found that these three biomarkers participated immune-related processes ‘immunoglobulin complex’. In additional, we discovered thatTNFSF10 was correlated with Neutrophil and MAIT in immune microenvironment of PPS. In agreement with the results of the public database data analysis, the expression of TNFSF10, BIRC3, IL1A, NFKBIA and CASP10 was markedly over-expressed in clinical PPS samples versus normal samples. Conclusion Overall, we obtained five apoptosis related biomarkers (TNFSF10, BIRC3, IL1A, NFKBIAand CASP10) associated with PPS, which laid a theoretical foundation for the treatment of PPS.