Figure 4

Scatter plots showing the time-dependent up-regulation in spinal cord tissue at different time points after mild injury of a subset of 80 genes, according to the results of a published gene expression analysis from Di Giovanni et al. [gene expression dataset: GEO-GDS339; [11]]. These genes belong to GO categories (e.g. GO:0001525_angiogenesis, GO:0045896_regulation_of_transcription__mitotic, adhesion, GO:0007155_cell_adhesion, GO:0007049_cell_cycle, GO:0000278_mitotic_cell_cycle, GO:0016477_cell_migration, GO:0042551_neuron_maturation and GO:0030154_cell_differentiation) that have been found, in our spinal cord compression experiments, to undergo the same pattern of differential regulation shown here in the DiGiovanni dataset at 4 and 24 hours after compression injury. Each gene expression value (intensity) was calculated as the average of 4 array experiments (GDS339) and represented in a scatter plot against the average value of 4 control array experiments [11]. The correlation analysis confirms that the findings of our gene expression analysis in compressed spinal cord reproduce previous observations obtained using a similar experimental paradigm of spinal cord injury.