Figure 4.

The identified subnetwork contains the essential transcription factors and other genes required for pluripotency maintenance. The twelve genes on the inner ring are transcription factors known to play essential or important role in pluripotency renewal of human embryonic stem cells. These include three master transcription factors, NANOG, POU5F1, and SOX2, which are absolutely required for pluripotency maintenance. The genes located on the outer ring were identified by DeGNServer for being closely coordinated with those transcription factors in the inner ring. The genes on outer ring, but highlighted in yellow, are those that are implicated by the existing literature to participate in the pluripotency renewal. This subnetwork was generated by using SNBuilder method [21] with NANOG, POU5F1, SOX2, and PHC1 as query seeds.