Microarray Analysis of Visceral Adipose Tissue in Obese Women Reveals Common Crossroads Among Inflammation, Metabolism, Addictive Behaviors, and Cancer

Figures

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  Figure 1. Protein–protein interaction network of differentially expressed genes in the visceral fat tissue of Mexican women with obesity (n = 10). The lists of the differentially overexpressed (a) and underexpressed (b) genes (Z score ≥ 1.5 SD) were analyzed on the STRING database and Cytoscape software to obtain the primary clusters of subnetworks using the Molecular Complex Detection (MCODE) complement (cutoff = 0.5). The genes from the first three clusters were loaded into the STRING database to obtain the protein–protein interaction network.

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  Figure 2. Protein–protein interaction network of differentially overexpressed genes in the visceral adipose tissue of Mexican women with obesity (n = 10). The lists of the differentially overexpressed genes (Z score ≥ 1.5 SD) were analyzed on the STRING database and Cytoscape software to obtain the primary clusters of subnetworks using the Molecular Complex Detection (MCODE) complement (cutoff = 0.5). The genes from the first three clusters were loaded together in the STRING database to obtain the protein–protein interaction network. In the resulting PPI network (a), the KEGG pathways (tables) related to inflammation (b), metabolism (c), hormonal (d), neuroendocrine (e), cancer (f), and infection (g) processes were marked with different colors to identify those proteins with the most significant interaction (amplified nodes).

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  Figure 3. Overexpression of MAPK and PI3K-AKT signaling pathways in the visceral adipose tissue of Mexican women with obesity. Overexpressed genes significantly associated with MAPK (a) and PI3K-AKT (b) signaling pathways are shown in yellow and red, respectively. In the MAPK pathway, purple arrows indicate the deregulation of ERK and IL1-IL1R-JNK/P38 signaling, while in the PI3K/AKT pathway, they indicate the growth factors and extracellular matrix receptors' leading pathways. n = 10 per group.

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  Figure 4. Voronoi visualization of differentially over and underexpressed genes in the visceral adipose tissue of Mexican women with obesity. The lists of the differentially over and underexpressed genes (Z score ≥ 1.5 SD) were analyzed on the REACTOME database to obtain Voronoi visualization. Amplification of the intracellular signaling by second messengers (a and a′), MAPK family signaling cascades (b and b′), and signaling by receptor tyrosine kinases (c and c′) was done for a deeper visualization. n = 10 per group.

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  Figure 5. Overexpression of TNF-α, MAPK, and AKT proteins in the visceral adipose tissue of Mexican women with obesity. Representative images of histological analysis evaluated in H&E staining (a) and quantitative evaluation (a′) of the adipocytes' cross-sectional diameter of VAT of women with obesity (O) and control (C) women. Representative images of immunodetection of TNF-α (b), MAPK (c), and AKT (d) in VAT of women with obesity (O) and control (C). The images were acquired with 10X and 40X amplification. Optical density (OD) means and standard deviations are shown in graphics (b′, c′, and d′). Student's t-test was used to determine statistically significant differences. ⁣∗: p ≤ 0.05; ⁣∗∗p ≤ 0.01. n = 10 per group.