In-Silico Study of Immune System Associated Genes in Case of Type-2 Diabetes With Insulin Action and Resistance, and/or Obesity

Type-2 diabetes and obesity are among the leading human diseases and highly complex in terms of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches and are among the most frequent and highly complex and heterogeneous in nature. Based on epidemiological evidence, it is known that the patients suffering from obesity are considered to be significantly at higher risk for type-2 diabetes. There are several pieces of evidence that support the hypothesis that these diseases interlinked and obesity may aggravate the risk(s) of type-2 diabetes. Multi-level unwanted alterations such as (epi-) genetic alterations, changes at the transcriptional level, and altered signaling pathways (receptor, cytoplasmic, and nuclear level) are the major source which promotes several complex diseases and such heterogeneous level of complexities are considered as the major barrier in the development of therapeutic. With so many known challenges, it is critical to understand the relationships and the common shared causes between type-2 diabetes and obesity which is difficult to unravel and understand. For this purpose, we have selected publicly available datasets of gene expression for obesity and type-2 diabetes and unraveled the genes and the pathways associated with the immune system, and have also focused on the T-cell signaling pathway and its components. We have applied a simplified computational approach to understanding differential gene expression and patterns and the enriched pathways for obesity and type-2 diabetes. Furthermore, we have also analyzed the genes by using network-level understanding. In the analysis, we observe that there is fewer genes that are commonly differentially expressed while a comparatively higher number of pathways are shared between them. There are only four pathways that are associated with the immune system in case of obesity and ten immune-associated pathways in case of type-2 diabetes and among them, only two pathways are commonly altered. Furthermore, we have presented SPNS1, PTPN6, CD247, FOS, and PIK3R5 as the overexpressed genes which are the direct components of TCR signaling.