Identification of Common Biological Pathways and Drug Targets Across Multiple Respiratory Viruses Based on Human Host Gene Expression Analysis

Smith, Steven B.; Dampier, William; Tozeren, Aydin; Brown, James R.; Magid-Slav, Michal

All datasets exhibiting acceptable quality were analyzed for probe differential expression. An example volcano plot is shown in Figure S2 for RSV treatment group at peak symptoms versus control group (data originating from GSE17156). Cutoff levels of 1.5-fold increase or decrease in probe expression levels, respectively, and p-values ,0.05 were used throughout (represented by red lines in Figure S2 ). All comparison groups had at least some differentially expressed probes, although the number varied greatly indicating potential falsely discovered probes (for example, a comparison group within GSE18816 had 111 differentially expressed probes while a comparison group within GSE11408 had 2533 differentially expressed probes). However, the conservative pathway enrichment approach we employed tends to attenuate falsely discovered genes.