GO Analysis and KEGG pathway Analysis

GO analysis was applied to analyze the main function of the specific genes with significant differences in the representative profiles of miRNA target genes. Fisher’s exact test was applied to determine the significant GO categories and P values were corrected by FDR. Only GOs that had a P-value of < 0.001 and an FDR of < 0.05 were chosen. Enrichment provides a measure of the significance of the function: as the enrichment increases, the corresponding function is more specific, which helps us to find those GOs with more concrete function description in the experiment.

Pathway analysis was used to find out the significant pathway of the differential genes. Pathway annotations of Microarray genes were download from KEGG (http://www.genome.jp/kegg/). Fisher exact test was also used to find the significant enrichment pathway. The resulting P values were adjusted using the BH FDR algorithm¹⁶. Pathway categories with p-value < 0.05 were reported.

Procedures of constructing the miRNA-mRNA network associated with selenium deficiency were shown in Fig. 1.

Flow chart of constructing the miRNA-mRNA network associated with selenium deficiency. LS, low selenium; SS, selenium supplementation; GO-analysis, Gene Ontology analysis; KEGG pathway analysis, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis.