Protein–Protein Interaction (PPI) Network Construction and Module Analysis

In the current study, information on the protein–protein interaction (PPI) network of RBPs were obtained from the Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes (STRING) database³ with interaction score >0.7, and 388 differentially expressed RBPs were chosen to constitute the PPI network. Plug-in Molecular Complex Detection (MCODE) was applied to detect densely connected regions in PPI networks, which was visualized by Cytoscape (version 3.8.0).⁴ The PPI networks were constructed using Cytoscape and the most significant module in the PPI networks was selected using MCODE. The criteria for selection were set as follows: maximum depth = 100, degree cut-off = 2, node score cut-off = 0.2, MCODE scores > 5 and K-score = 2.