Networks regulated by ginger towards stomach and small intestine for its warming interior function

Abstract

Ginger is widely used as both a cooking spice in East/South Asia and a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for its warming interior function where mainly refers to the part of stomach and small intestine. However, the underlying mechanism at protein regulating network level is obscure. In this study, within stomach and small intestine, 6-gingerol and 6-shaogaol (ginger's main bio-active compounds), are selected to initialise the underlying protein regulating networks. The initial step is to identify proteins targeted/regulated by ginger which were extracted from PubMed literatures and compound-protein databases. Then, functional protein-protein interactions (FPPI) were fetched to form the underlying regulating networks within stomach and small intestine. Further enrichment analysis of FPPI participating proteins salience five key metabolic processes which can be validated by both PubMed literature and online bioinformatics tools. Thus, ginger's warming interior function is primarily elaborated via FPPI network by enhancing metabolic processes.