Gene Network Analysis of Glucose Linked Signaling Pathways and Their Role in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cell Growth and Survival in HuH7 and HepG2 Cell Lines

Figure 5

Transcriptional networks regulated by high glucose in human cells. The results were obtained by comparative analysis of datasets retrieved from the literature as defined in Table 1, that is, regulated by high glucose in human cells and more specifically in HepG2 cells, representative of either liver, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) phenotype, belonging to the list of cancer biomarkers or in the set of genes differentially detected in HepG2 versus HuH7 cells. The left panel represents intracellular pathways with significantly overrepresented transcriptional targets in the set of genes regulated by high glucose, and the right panel presents the transcription factors whose target genes are significantly overrepresented in the set of genes regulated by high glucose. Left barrels (a) indicate significant overrepresentativity of signaling pathways differentially represented in the response of HepG2 cell lines to high glucose, and central barrels (b) represent transcription factors whose target genes are significantly overrepresented in these pathways. Significant differences in representativity were calculated for -test confidence levels >95%. Abbreviations: HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma; others and full data are reported in Supplementary Information.