Global Analysis of Gene Expression and Identification of Modules in Echinacea purpurea Using Systems Biology Approach

Co-expression analysis is a useful tool to analysis data and detection of genes that act in the same pathway orbiological process. Echinacea purpurea is one of the most important medicinal plant of the Asteraceae family that isknown as antioxidative and antiviral agent. Despite medicinal importance of E. purpurea, very few reports areavailable for metabolic mechanisms in this plant. With the aim to elucidate the gene expression profiling andidentification of modules in E. purpurea, we performed a systems biology analysis on publicly availabletranscriptome data. Gene ontology and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis revealed that the unigenes were highlyrelated to the cellular process, primary metabolic process, carbon metabolism and biosynthesis of antibiotics. The coexpressionnetworks divided genes into multiple modules. Of these, module M2 associated with secondary metabolicprocess. Moreover, a total of 47 transcription factor families such as bHLH, bZIP, C2H2, MYB and WRKY inmodules were identified. These findings can provide an overall picture for better understanding the gene expressionpatterns and common transcriptional mechanisms in E. purpurea.

Keywords:

Co-expression analysis , Echinacea purpurea , Transcriptomics data