Understanding the Biological Functions of DCF1 Based on Molecular Interaction Network

It is important to understand the neural dendrite formation at molecular level. Unfortunately, the regulation mechanisms underlying neural dendrite formation remain unclear. In our previous work, it is found that dentritic cell factors (DCF1) express differentially between undifferentiated and differentiated neural stem cells (NSCs). In this study, we compared whole-genome gene expression data for DCF1-knockout and wild type mice. By integrating gene expression data and protein-protein interaction data, a connected subnetwork that consist of differentially expressed genes is identified. Analyzing the affected subnetwork, we find that glycolysis is enriched for down-regulated genes in the extracted subnetwork while biosynthetic process is enriched for up-regulated genes, which give hints that DCF1 is possibly related to these functions and provides guidelines for future experiment verification.