Objective: An analysis of the genes involved in both osteoporosis and modifications of the jawbone, through text mining, using a web search tool, of information regarding gene/protein interaction.
Design: The final set of genes involved in the present phenomenon was obtained by expansion-filtering loop. Using a web-available software (STRING), interactions among all genes were searched for, and a clustering procedure was performed in which only high-confidence predicted associations were considered.
Results: Two hundred forty-two genes potentially involved in osteoporosis and in modifications of the jawbone were recorded. Seven "leader genes" were identified (CTNNB1, IL1B, IL6, JUN, RUNX2, SPP1, TGFB1), while another 10 genes formed the cluster B group (BMP2, BMP7, COL1A1, ICAM1, IGF1, IL10, MMP9, NFKB1, TNFSF11, VEGFA). Ninety-eight genes had no interactions, and were defined as "orphan genes".
Conclusions: The expansion of knowledge regarding the molecular basis causing osteoporotic traits has been brought about with the help of a de novo identification, based on the data mining of genes involved in osteoporosis and in modification of the jawbone. A comparison of the present data, in which no role was verified for 98 genes that had been previously supposed to have a role, with that of the literature, in which another 81 genes, as obtained from GWAS reviews and meta-analyses, appeared to be strongly associated with osteoporosis, probably attests to a lack of information on osteoporotic disease.
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