Research Paper Volume 15, Issue 22 pp 13411—13421

Figure 2. The DEGs obtained in GSE11886 were analyzed by GO and KEGG enrichment analyses. The corresponding DEGs at the BP level were analyzed using the DAVID online database tool to integrate the GO terminology, and a BP network of DEGs was created. The up-regulation pathway diagram of GO pathway of DEGs (A, B) was graphed using the R language, and the up-regulated pathways such as inflammatory response, negative regulation of apoptotic process, and innate immune response were obtained. The down-regulation pathway diagram (C, D) was graphed, and it was found that the down-regulation pathways such as protein phosphorylation, positive regulation of GTPase activity, and rRNA processing were the enrichment pathways of AS. The DEGs were utilized to analyze the KEGG pathway and a KEGG pathway diagram was drawn (E), from which the ERK pathway and other pathways were obtained. Besides, the BioCarta pathway was analyzed, and its pathway diagram was graphed (F). The miRNA candidate target genes were predicted using the online tools TargetScan, miRDB, and PITA. Based on these candidate target genes and the DEGs in GSE118806, a Venn diagram was drawn with the VennDiagram package to obtain the intersection and find the common binding miR-212-3p (G). The binding sites between mRNA and miRNA were plotted according to the gene prediction results (H). All genes were subjected to GSEA using the GSEA tool (http://www.gsea-msigdb.org/). DEGs, differentially expressed genes; BP, biological process; DAVID, Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery; GO, Gene Ontology; KEGG, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes; AS, ankylosing spondylitis; ERK, extracellular-signal-regulated kinase; mRNA, messenger RNA; miRNA, microRNA; GSEA, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis.