High-fat diet (HFD) can cause obesity, inducing dysregulation of the visceral adipose tissue (VAT). This study aimed to explore potential biological pathways and hub genes involved in obese VAT, and for that, bioinformatic analysis of multiple datasets was performed. The expression profiles (GSE30247, GSE167311 and GSE79434) were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus. Overlapping differentially expressed genes (ODEGs) between normal diet and HFD groups in GSE30247 and GSE167311 were selected to run protein-protein interaction network, GO and KEGG analysis. The hub genes in ODEGs were screened by Cytoscape software and further verified in GSE79434 and obese mouse model. A total of 747 ODEGs (599 up-regulated and 148 down-regulated) were screened, and the GO and KEGG analysis showed that the up-regulated ODEGs were significantly enriched in inflammatory response and extracellular matrix receptor interaction pathways. On the other hand, the down-regulated ODEGs were involved in metabolic pathways; however, there were no significant KEGG pathways. Furthermore, six hub genes, Mki67, Rac2, Itgb2, Emr1, Tyrobp and Csf1r were acquired. These pathways and genes were verified in GSE79434 and VAT of obese mice. This study revealed that HFD induced VAT expansion, inflammation and fibrosis, and the hub genes could be used as therapeutic biomarkers in obesity.
Keywords: Obesity; bioinformatics analysis; biomarker; fibrosis; high-fat diet; inflammation; visceral adipose tissue.