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. 2022 Jan 27:12:795123.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.795123. eCollection 2021.

Human Immune System Diseasome Networks and Female Oviductal Microenvironment: New Horizons to be Discovered

Angela Taraschi  1   2 , Costanza Cimini  1 , Alessia Colosimo  1 , Marina Ramal-Sanchez  1 , Fadl Moussa  1   3 , Samia Mokh  4 , Luca Valbonetti  1   5 , Giulia Capacchietti  1 , Israiel Tagaram  1 , Nicola Bernabò  1   5 , Barbara Barboni  1
Affiliations

Human Immune System Diseasome Networks and Female Oviductal Microenvironment: New Horizons to be Discovered

Angela Taraschi et al. Front Genet. .

Abstract

Human hypofertility and infertility are two worldwide conditions experiencing nowadays an alarming increase due to a complex ensemble of events. The immune system has been suggested as one of the responsible for some of the etiopathogenic mechanisms involved in these conditions. To shed some light into the strong correlation between the reproductive and immune system, as can be inferred by the several and valuable manuscripts published to date, here we built a network using a useful bioinformatic tool (DisGeNET), in which the key genes involved in the sperm-oviduct interaction were linked. This constitutes an important event related with Human fertility since this interaction, and specially the spermatozoa, represents a not-self entity immunotolerated by the female. As a result, we discovered that some proteins involved in the sperm-oviduct interaction are implicated in several immune system diseases while, at the same time, some immune system diseases could interfere by using different pathways with the reproduction process. The data presented here could be of great importance to understand the involvement of the immune system in fertility reduction in Humans, setting the basis for potential immune therapeutic tools in the near future.

Keywords: asthma; biological network; diseasome; human; immune system; immunological disease; oviductal environment; rheumatoid arthritis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Voronoi pathway visualization (Reacfoam) for the identified proteins in human oviduct. The color code denotes over-representation of that pathway in our input dataset. Light grey signifies pathways which are not significantly over-represented.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Curated diseasome network (CURDi). CURDi forms the two node sets of bipartite networks with two types of nodes: diseases (pink circle) and gene (blue circle). Disease node and gene node are connected if the gene is implicated in the disorder.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Animal model diseasome network (AMDi) . AMDi form the two node sets of bipartite networks with two types of nodes: diseases (pink circle) and gene (blue circle). Disease node and gene node are connected if the gene is implicated in the disorder.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Most linked genes in CURDi network. The histograms show the most linked genes to immune system diseases in CURDi: HLA-B, SERPING1 and IFNG.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Graphical representation of the most linked immune system diseases with the gene list in CURDi. The highest number of correlated genes are found in rheumatoid arthritis (14 linked genes), allergic reaction and hypersensitivity (13 linked genes) and asthma (10 linked genes).
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Graphical representation of the most linked immune system diseases with the genes list in AMDi. The most linked diseases were experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE, linked 17 genes) and asthma (linked 11 genes).
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