Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common tachycardia in clinic. However, the potential pathogenesis of AF associated thrombus formation is limited. Due to left atrial appendage (LAA) is the main source of thrombus formation. we identified the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in LAA between AF and SR (sinus rhythm), which were obtained from 43 left atrial appendage (LAA) samples from 20 cases of AF and 23 cases of SR in the expression profiles of GSE79768 and GSE115574 downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The DEGs were analyzed by bioinformatics methods, including gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichments by DAVID and KOBAS online analyses. A total of 96 DEGs containing 27 downregulated and 69 upregulated genes were identified between AF and SR. GO analysis showed that the biological processes of DEGs included cellular responses to cytokine, antigen processing and presentation, and basement membrane disassembly. The main cellular components focused primarily on cell surface and the molecular functions focused primarily on IgG binding. KEGG pathway analysis indicated that these DEGs were enriched in 8 KEGG pathway, including staphylococcus aureus infection, tuberculosis, phagosome, asthma, leishmaniasis, antigen processing and presentation, salivary secretion and gap junction. which mainly involved in immune response and inflammation. A network of DEGs was confirmed including 46 nodes and 84 edges, which presented the interaction of DEGs. Collectively, DEGs and pathways were screened in LAA of AF, which is beneficial to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying AF associated thrombus formation.

Keywords

  • atrial fibrillation
  • left atrial appendage
  • GEO data
  • integrated bioinformatics
  • differentially expressed genes