2.6. Publication Investigation of Key Genes

The DEGs in the PPI network with a degree of connectivity ≥ 10 and the module genes mined were selected as the key genes. Based on the Biopython [26] (https://doc.yonyoucloud.com/doc/Biopython-cn/cn/chr09.html#sec-elink-citations), the sepsis-related publications were searched in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubMed using the symbol of genes and sepsis as the keywords. The number of publications on sepsis of each gene was counted, and the genes corresponding to 3 ≤ number of publications ≤ 10 were taken as the focus of attention on sepsis-related genes.

To observe the gene expression in the normal group, high immune score group, and low immune score group, GraphPad Prim 5 [27] was used to draw the expression scatter diagram of each key sepsis-related gene.