Molecular interaction network and pathway studies of ADAM33 potentially relevant to asthma

Background: Asthma is a complex disease caused by gene-gene, gene-protein, and protein-protein interactions and the influence of environment, which plays a significant role in causing asthma pathogenesis. ADAM33 is known to be an important gene involved in asthma pathogenesis. No one single gene is a causal factor of asthma; rather, asthma is caused by a complex interaction of multiple genes having pathogenetic and protective effects. Objective: To identify and understand the interacting genes and proteins of ADAM33. Methods: The Ingenuity Pathway Analysis and GeneMANIA tools and a literature survey were used to identify the interacting candidates of ADAM33 and the WEB-based GEne SeT AnaLysis Toolkit was used to perform enrichment analysis of the proteins identified. Results: Keeping ADAM33 as a major hub, the authors identified some proteins whose interaction with ADAM33 had been associated with asthma and they recognized some proteins, such as amyloid beta (A4) precursor protein, ataxin-7, alpha(4)-integrin, alpha(5)-integrin, alpha(9)-integrin, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-4, and ubiquilin-4, that had not been previously associated with asthma. Conclusion: The proteins identified in this study were enriched for various mechanisms that are involved in airway hyperresponsiveness, and through the interaction with ADAM33, they may have potential relevance in asthma. (C) 2014 American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.