Research article

New insights about host response to smallpox using microarray data

Gustavo H Esteves^1,4 , Ana CQ Simoes^1,2 , Estevao Souza³ , Rodrigo A Dias¹ , Raydonal Ospina³ and Thiago M Venancio²

¹  BIOINFO, Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

²  Laboratório de Bioinformática, Departamento de Bioquímica, Instituto de Química, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

³  Departamento de Estatística, Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

⁴  Departamento de Matemática e Estatística, Centro de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Estadual da Paraíba, Brazil

author email corresponding author email

BMC Systems Biology 2007, 1:38doi:10.1186/1752-0509-1-38

Published:	24 August 2007

Abstract

Background

Smallpox is a lethal disease that was endemic in many parts of the world until eradicated by massive immunization. Due to its lethality, there are serious concerns about its use as a bioweapon. Here we analyze publicly available microarray data to further understand survival of smallpox infected macaques, using systems biology approaches. Our goal is to improve the knowledge about the progression of this disease.

Results

We used KEGG pathways annotations to define groups of genes (or modules), and subsequently compared them to macaque survival times. This technique provided additional insights about the host response to this disease, such as increased expression of the cytokines and ECM receptors in the individuals with higher survival times. These results could indicate that these gene groups could influence an effective response from the host to smallpox.

Conclusion

Macaques with higher survival times clearly express some specific pathways previously unidentified using regular gene-by-gene approaches. Our work also shows how third party analysis of public datasets can be important to support new hypotheses to relevant biological problems.