Systematic Analysis of Environmental Chemicals That Dysregulate Critical Period Plasticity-Related Gene Expression Reveals Common Pathways That Mimic Immune Response to Pathogen

Figure 2

Molecular matching via GSEA identifies 50 chemicals that increase expression of genes downregulated in the juvenile and Lynx1-/- critical period transcriptome signatures. (a) 2001 CHEM composite gene sets were split into CHEM up (1742 signatures) and CHEM down (1242 signatures) libraries to assess the directional impact of each chemical on critical period gene expression. (b) GSEA was used to assess negative scores (reflecting a chemical’s impact on downregulated critical period genes) for CHEM up and CHEM down signatures against the critical period signatures and the binomial test to assess a bias to up or down library. (c) Fifty chemicals increase downregulated critical period genes. See Supplementary Table 1 for a list of all 50 chemicals.