Effect of the Abnormal Expression of BMP-4 in the Blood of Diabetic Patients on the Osteogenic Differentiation Potential of Alveolar BMSCs and the Rescue Effect of Metformin: A Bioinformatics-Based Study

Figure 3

Differentially expressed genes associated with regulation of osteoblast differentiation and major risk gene screening. (a) Fold changes in downregulated genes enriched in the “positive regulation of osteoblast differentiation” term in blood samples from the T2DM group compared with the CON group. (b) The results of random forest analysis showing that BMP-4 has the highest mean decrease Gini coefficient and plays the most important role in “positive regulation of osteoblast differentiation.” (c) Protein-protein interaction analysis of BMP-4 biological function-related proteins showing that BMP-4 is closely related to Smad signaling. (d) Schematic diagram of the TGF-β signaling pathway showing that BMP-4 can gradually regulate cell biological functions, such as osteoblast differentiation, by activating Smad signaling.

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