Network analysis reveals functional cross-links between disease and inflammation genes

Connections between inflammation and diseases are suggested important in understanding the genetic mechanisms of diseases. However, studies on the functional cross-links between inflammation and disease genes are still in their early stages. We integrated the protein-protein interaction (PPI), inflammation genes, and gene-disease associations to construct a disease-inflammation network (DIN). We found that nodes, which are both inflammation and disease genes (namely inter-genes), are topologically important in the DIN structure. Via mapping inter-genes to PPI, we classified diseases into two categories, which are significantly different in Intimacy measuring the contribution of inflammation genes to the connections between disease pairs. Furthermore, we constructed a cross-talking subpathways network. As indicated, the cross-subpathway analysis shows great performance in capturing higher-level relationship among inflammation and disease processes. Collectively, The network-based analysis provides us a rather promising insight into the intricate relationship between inflammation and disease genes.