Unveiling the link between arsenic toxicity and diabetes: an in silico exploration into the role of transcription factors.

Arsenic-induced diabetes, despite being a relatively newer finding, is now a growing area of interest, owing to its multifaceted nature of development and the diversity of metabolic conditions that result from it, on top of the already complicated manifestation of arsenic toxicity. Identification and characterization of the common and differentially affected cellular metabolic pathways and their regulatory components among various arsenic and diabetes-associated complications may aid in understanding the core molecular mechanism of arsenic-induced diabetes. This study, therefore, explores the effects of arsenic on human cell lines through 14 transcriptomic datasets containing 160 individual samples using in silico tools to take a systematic, deeper look into the pathways and genes that are being altered. Among these, we especially focused on the role of transcription factors due to their diverse and multifaceted roles in biological processes, aiming to comprehensively investigate the underlying mechanism of arsenic-induced diabetes as well as associated health risks. We present a potential mechanism heavily implying the involvement of the TGF-β/SMAD3 signaling pathway leading to cell cycle alterations and the NF-κB/TNF-α, MAPK, and Ca Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43188-024-00255-y.