Assessment of Sleep Effects of Flaxseed Consumption: a System Biology Study

Background and objectives: Flaxseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) as an outstanding food with beneficial properties contains omega-3 fatty acids, lignans, α-linolenic acid, and digestible proteins. Investigation of sleep improvement of flaxseed via network analysis was the main aim of this study. Methods: The dysregulated genes in response to flaxseed consumption were derived from GSE36422, a gene set of Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The sleep related genes were extracted from GeneCards database and were analyzed via undirected protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis to find the hub genes. Common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and hub genes were pointed out as the critical genes in response to flaxseed consumption. The hub genes were assessed via directed PPI network to find position of the common genes and their first neighbors. Results: RAF1 was appeared as hub gene among 212 sleep related individual hubs. Analysis of sleep related hubs demonstrated that members of MAPK gene family, CCND1, KRAS, RAF1, PIK3CA, and EGFR were the key actors and HRAS, AKT1, IL6, RHOA, TNF, SRC, FOXO3, CDC42, PRKACG, PRKACB, MAPK8, and JAK2 were the critical controlled genes. MAPK gene family, KRAS, and PIK3CA were pointed out as the critical first neighbors of RAF1. Conclusion: It can be concluded that, RAF1 the sleep related hub gene is down-regulated in response to flaxseed consumption. Downregulation of RAF1 gene and regulation of members of MAPK gene family, KRAS, and PIK3CA improve sleep quality.