Fig 1.
Workflow of the analysis.
Fig 2.
A. A heat map of toxicity endpoints is generated based on the ADMETlab 3.0 platform.
Red, yellow, and green represent high risk (>0.7), medium risk (0.3–0.7), and low risk (<0.3), respectively. The toxicity scores of each polymer are numerically marked to show the relative risk level. B. 2D structures of polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polystyrene. C.Microplastic-target network diagram. Red squares represent microplastics and blue squares represent corresponding targets.
Fig 3.
Screening of differentially expressed genes and functional enrichment analysis of crossover genes in allergic rhinitis.
A.The red and green colors indicate significantly upregulated and downregulated genes. B.Scatter plot of differentially expressed genes in AR. C.The Venn diagram illustrates the intersection of genes between microplastic toxicity targets and differentially expressed genes for AR. D.The clustered heatmap shows the expression profile data of the 15 intersecting genes in AR. Red color represents gene expression upregulation and blue color represents gene expression downregulation. E-G. Biological process (BP), cellular composition (CC), and molecular function (MF) were presented using bubble plots. The size of the bubbles represents the number of enriched genes, and the color represents the significance. H. KEGG analysis results were presented using string diagrams, with different colors indicating different significant pathways and their associated genes.
Table 1.
KEGG enrichment analysis.
Fig 4.
Protein-protein network analysis.
A. The PPI network of intersecting genes is shown based on the STRING database. Circles represent gene nodes, and the frequency of connecting lines indicates the degree of interaction. B. The MCL clustering network of intersecting genes was demonstrated based on the STRING database. Different colored circles represent different clusters.C. PPI network of intersecting genes is shown based on the Genemama website. The inner black circles represent intersecting gene nodes and the outer black circles represent predicted gene nodes. The frequency of connecting lines indicates the degree of interaction.D. Demonstration of functional enrichment of intersecting genes in the Genemama database. Different colors represent different biological functions, and the size of the circle represents the number of genes enriched. E. Microplastic-target-pathway network. Blue triangles represent microplastics, red inverted triangles represent targets, and green ovals represent pathways.
Fig 5.
LASSO regression screening of key targets and their internal validation analysis.
A-B. Lasso regression was used to screen key targets, and 3 of them were identified as key targets of microplastics acting in AR. C. Prognostic heatmap demonstrating the expression profile data of 3 key targets in AR. The upper part of it represents the risk score, where red color represents high risk and blue color represents low risk. The lower part represents the differential expression profiles of the genes. Blue color represents gene expression down-regulation and red color represents gene expression up-regulation. D. Box plot demonstrating the differential expression of 15 intersecting genes between AR and normal controls. *p < 0.05. E-G. ROC curves validate the diagnostic efficacy of the 3 key targets. H-J. Single-gene GSEA analysis of the 3 key targets. The upper part represents the enrichment score, the middle part represents the enrichment pathway, and the lower part represents the risk Rank.
Table 2.
ROC curve analysis of AUC and 95% CI for DNAJB9, SQSTM1, and MAPK9.
Fig 6.
Prediction of therapeutic drugs for key targets and molecular docking.
A. Prediction of therapeutic drugs for key targets based on the CTD database and presented as a key target-therapeutic drug network. Where green squares represent key targets, red squares represent therapeutic drugs, and blue squares represent therapeutic drugs shared by 3 targets.B. 118 shared therapeutic drugs were obtained by Wayne diagrams. C-E. Molecular docking results of the 3 key targets with resveratrol, respectively.
Table 3.
Molecular docking of resveratrol with DNAJB9, SQSTM1, and MAPK9.