Fig. 2: MDD-specific expression profiling of m6A modifying enzymes in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of MDD and control subjects following qPCR and their relationship with methylation changes.
From: M6A RNA epitranscriptome dynamics linked to major depressive disorder and suicide risk
A Colored bar plot displaying normalized fold change expression values of key demethylating (FTO) and methylating (METTL3 and METTL14) transcripts in the dlPFC of control and MDD subjects. The expression values of individual genes were normalized with the GAPDH expression values. Data has been presented with standard error of mean (SEM) and significance (p ≤ 0.05) between the two groups was determined following Student’s t test. B Colored violin plot showing expression changes for the same three gene transcripts (FTO, METTL3 and METTL14) but with normalized delta Ct (dCt) calculation. The individual violin plots with dotted scatter diagram showing normalized Ct value distribution across control and MDD samples. The level of significance between the groups has been shown at the top of the respective gene violin plot with the determined p-value changes. C The inverse correlation between expression level (Fold-Change) of 12 coding gene transcripts and their respective m6A methylation level (Fold-Change) has been presented with an inverted bar plot. The asterisk symbol has been added to the respective gene bar plot to highlight their level of significance for both m6A methylation and gene expression changes (*p < 0.05; **p < 0.005, and ***<0.0005). D The Pearson correlation analysis of m6A methylation vs gene expression of the 12 impacted gene transcripts has been presented with a scatter plot. The dashed regression line showing the inverse correlation between m6A methylation and gene expression changes for the 12 coding transcripts in the MDD group. Both the changes are presented with log2Fold-Change (log2FC) scale to determine the correlation. E RNA m6A methylation patterns across the transcript length of select genes (NR3C1, RAB5B, and TIAM1), which are relevant to CNS functions. The enriched methylation sites are depicted as colored bars on a linear transcript diagram, with their corresponding genomic positions shown in base pairs (bp).
