RETRACTED ARTICLE: Regional patterning of co-expressed genes in autistic brains

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a family of neurodevelopmental disorders that affect different regions of the brain. Therefore, knowing which part of the brain is severely affected by ASDs needs to be more clear. Moreover, transcriptome data analysis in ASDs is mainly performed on brain samples, but the restricted availability of human ASDs brain tissues has remained as a large challenge. We were then interested in examining whether blood can compensate for brain samples in transcriptomic researches of the etiology of ASDs when brain tissue is not available. Herein, to identify key characteristic genes which potentially trigger the development of autism, a total of 563 samples covering different tissues/regions of brain obtained from GEO database were re-analyzed. The varied genes which passed the pre-processing filters were subjected to a network-driven integrative workflow to explore significant modules and underlying pathways. Expression profiles of 15,524 common genes obtained among all the mentioned data sets were parsed into 10-gene modules. A functional enrichment analysis of brain module preservation revealed basic functional pathways preserved between the blood and brain samples. The preserved intra-modular hub genes were significantly enriched in copper ion and chiefly mitochondrial functions including oxidation, ATP synthesis and TCA pathways. The blood-derived networks shared a number of top hub genes with cerebellum network. Additionally, genes involved in mitochondrial metabolism have been indicated as top hub genes in selected modules.