Background Obesity is the most common metabolic disorder worldwide. Its progression rate has remained high in recent years. ObjectivesTherefore, the aim of this study was to diagnose important differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated in its development, which may be used as novel biomarkers or potential therapeutic targets for obesity. MethodsThe gene expression profile of E-MTAB-6728 was downloaded from the database. After screening DEGs in each ArrayExpress dataset, we further used the robust rank aggregation method to diagnose 876 significant DEGs including 438 up regulated and 438 down regulated genes. Pathway enrichment analyses and Gene Ontology (GO) were performed by online tool ToppCluster. These DEGs were shown to be significantly enriched in different obesity related pathways and GO functions. Then, the mentha, miRNet and NetworkAnalyst databases were used to construct the protein–protein interaction network, target genes - miRNA regulatory network and target genes - TF regulatory network. The module analysis was performed by the PEWCC1 plug‐in of Cytoscape based on the whole PPI network.Results We finally filtered out HSPA8, ESR1, YWHAH, RPL14, SOD2, BTG2, LYZ and EFNA1 hub genes. Hub genes were validated by ICH analysis, Receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis and RT-PCR. The robust DEGs linked with the development of obesity were screened through the ArrayExpress database, and integrated bioinformatics analysis was conducted. ConclusionsOur study provides reliable molecular biomarkers for screening and diagnosis, prognosis as well as novel therapeutic targets for obesity.