Identification of novel proliferative diabetic retinopathy related genes on protein-protein interaction network

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) is an eye disease caused by diabetes. Because this disease may lead to blindness, effective treatments are urgently needed. However, the pathogenesis is far from good understanding, resulting in difficulties in designing effective treatments. In this study, we tried to give a few contributions to uncover its pathogenesis by searching for novel PDR-related genes. New genes were identified based on known genes related to proliferative diabetic retinopathy using a protein-protein interaction network with a shortest path approach. The newly identified genes were further filtered using a permutation test. The analyses showed that the discovered genes were highly enriched in gene ontology terms and KEGG pathways shared by known proliferative diabetic retinopathy related genes. Finally, we discussed the likelihood of some newly discovered genes being novel genes related to proliferative diabetic retinopathy. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.