Background: Sepsis-associated acute lung injury (ALI) is a potentially lethal complication associated with a poor prognosis and high mortality worldwide, especially in the outbreak of COVID-19. However, the fundamental mechanisms of this complication were still not fully elucidated. Thus, we conducted this study to identify hub genes and biological pathways of sepsis-associated ALI, mainly focus on two pathways of LPS and HMGB1. Methods: Gene expression profile GSE3037 were downloaded from Gene

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... Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, including 8 patients with sepsis-induced acute lung injury, with 8 unstimulated blood neutrophils, 8 LPS- induced neutrophils and 8 HMGB1-induced neutrophils. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) identifications, Gene Ontology (GO) function analysis, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways analysis, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network constructions were performed to obtain hub genes and relevant biological pathways.Results: We identified 534 and 317 DEGs for LPS- and HMGB1-induced ALI, respectively. The biological pathways involved in LPS- and HMGB1-induced ALI were also identified accordingly. By PPI network analysis, we found that ten hub genes for LPS-induced ALI (CXCL8, TNF, IL6, IL1B, ICAM1, CXCL1, CXCL2, IL1A, IL1RN and CXCL3) and another ten hub genes for HMGB1-induced ALI (CCL20, CXCL2, CXCL1, CCL4, CXCL3, CXCL9, CCL21, CXCR6, KNG1 and SST). Furthermore, by combining analysis, the results revealed that genes of TNF, CCL20, IL1B, NFKBIA, CCL4, PTGS2, TNFAIP3, CXCL2, CXCL1 and CXCL3 were potential biomarkers for sepsis-associated ALI. Conclusions: Our study revealed that ten hub genes associated with sepsis-induced ALI were TNF, CCL20, IL1B, NFKBIA, CCL4, PTGS2, TNFAIP3, CXCL2, CXCL1 and CXCL3, which may serve as genetic biomarkers and be further verified in prospective experimental trials.