Gender Differences of B Cell Signature in Healthy Subjects Underlie Disparities in Incidence and Course of SLE Related to Estrogen

Figure 1

Gene profiling reveals differential expression genes between healthy females and males. (a) The purity of B cells was checked using CD19 antibody after selection using B cell isolation kit. (b) Hierarchical clustering of B cells of six healthy females and males using a list of 358 differentially expressed genes available on NimbleGen chips (adj. 𝑃 value <0.05). The heat maps show the most highly changed gene expression (TOP100) in response to each stimulus. Each row in the heat maps represents a gene and each column represents a microarray sample. Red and green indicate upregulated and downregulated expression, respectively. All samples cluster in accordance with the gender of the participant, which shows a good homogeneous expression profile between healthy males’ and females’ groups. (c) The number which of genes displayed differential expression between healthy females and males. Estrogen-relevant DEGs were listed independently.