Identifying significant crosstalk of pathways in tuberous sclerosis complex.

OBJECTIVE:Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is the second most common phakomatosis and is characterized by the formation of benign hamartomas and low-grade neoplasms in multiple organ systems. In this study, our objective here was to explore the interaction and crosstalk between pathways in response to tuberous sclerosis complex. MATERIALS AND METHODS:We enriched the significant pathways and made the crosstalk analysis of the significant pathways. RESULTS:The results showed that ECM-receptor interaction was a significant pathway in TSC. In addition, insulin-signaling and mTOR signaling also have been identified involved in TSC here, which have been well characterized. Further analysis indicated that there was a crosstalk between ECM-receptor interaction and antigen processing and presentation, ECM-receptor interaction and apoptosis, and leishmaniasis-oxidative phosphorylation-pancreatic cancer. In this study, a network-based approach was used to analyze the crosstalk among TSC related pathways. The crosstalk of pathways is found and analyzed using the PPI datasets and expression profiles. CONCLUSIONS:Our work showed that comprehensive and system-wide analysis could provide evidence for TSC pathway and complement the traditional component-based approaches. The crosstalk identified might provide new alternative insights into the TSC pathology, which may contribute to the development of novel therapeutic targets for TSC.