Biological Signaling Network in Myocardial Infarction in Young Adults. A Study of Transcriptome Analysis

Background: Myocardial infarction (MI) is the common manifestation of coronary heart disease that develops from occlusion of coronary arteries. Several risk factors of MI were identified, but data pertaining to genetics and molecular mechanisms involved in the development of MI is limited. Therefore, the present study attempts to analyze the peripheral blood transcriptome information of MI patients and unveil the key genes involved in the pathogenesis of MI. Methods: Total RNA was extracted from the blood sample for illumine sequencing, and raw data obtained were subjected to quality control (QC) using the FastQC tool, followed by trimming of raw data by the fastp tool. Further processed high-quality data were aligned onto the human reference genome using HISAT2 aligner. Gene quantification was done using the feature Counts plugin in the subread package. The raw read counts were given as input to the differential expression analysis (DESeq2) R package for the computation of differentially expressed genes. Gene set enrichment analysis for gene ontology was done using the clusterProfiler R package. Results: A total of 609 genes were significantly expressed in the present study, of which 561 genes were upregulated and 48 genes were downregulated. This study presents overall changes in genes involved in different categories such as biological processes, molecular functions, and cellular components in responses to MI. Conclusions: The significantly deregulated genes identified in the present study not only indicate the molecular and cellular changes but also suggest the scope for the detection of specific gene markers for MI.