In our study, CDC5L and HMGB2 were shown to not only be independent but also mutually regulate certain hub gene expressions (Figure 4B), namely, it regulated the pentose phosphate pathway (ko00030) and glycolysis/gluconeogenesis (ko00010) in carbohydrate metabolism, dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) (ko05414) associated with cardiovascular diseases, as well as complement and coagulation cascades (ko04610) and staphylococcus aureus infection (ko05150) in the immune system (Supplementary Table 4). The gene discussed is HMGB2; the disease is staphylococcus aureus infection.