Pathway enrichment analysis of Dang-gui for hematopoiesis

Although intensively studied, there is still lack of pathway networks on hematopoiesis effect of Dang-gui (also called Angelica sinensis) that is expressed as “tonify blood” in Chinese medicine. In this study, started from the chemical compounds, proteins targeted by Dang-gui were explored. After that, pathway networks enriched with these targeted proteins were analyzed with hypergeometric distribution on threshold of p-value set to 0.05 for pharmacology mechanism. Meanwhile, pathway networks enriched with OMIM genes of hematopoiesis were also calculated for pathology analysis in the same way. Then, these two pathway networks of pharmacology and pathology were merged into one for validation with wet-data collected from reviewing experiment-based literature for correctness, coverage and further predictions. As a result, not only four pathway networks (e.g., signal transduction, immune system, developmental biology, and extracellular matrix organization) were partially validated with wet-data, there are other five predicted pathway networks (e.g., disease, programmed cell death, cell cycle, hemostasis, and gene expressions) which might also be participated in accomplishing the therapeutic effects of Dang-gui.