Fig. 4: Energy spectrum density reveals low-frequency distributed ligand-receptor genes associated with brain development from childhood to adolescence.

A The energy spectrum density of the regional asymmetric signaling for each ligand-receptor (LR) pair. According to the graph Fourier transformation (GFT), the harmonic components can be computed by Laplacian decomposition from the structural connectome. Gene modules were classified by the dominant harmonic frequency of each LR pairs. Module M1, M2, M2 includes 101, 148, 430 genes, respectively. B Mean expression of genes in different modules and hierarchical regions during brain development. Error bars reflect ±1 standard error. The yellow shaded areas indicate stages in brain development where expression patterns differ obviously. The unimodal regions (n = 4 regions) include primary motor cortex (M1C), primary somatosensory cortex (S1C), primary auditory cortex (A1C), primary visual cortex (V1C). The transmodal regions (n = 4 regions) include dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DFC), anterior cingulate cortex (MFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VFC), orbital frontal cortex (PFC). RPKM, reads per kilobase per million mapped reads. C Dot plot showing the enriched GO terms derived using clusterprofiler. Dot sizes are proportional to the ratio of the input genes that are annotated in a term. The dot colors represent the P-values adjusted with a Benjamini-Hochberg correction, as indicated by the colorbar. P-values were obtained from clusterprofiler using Fisher’s exact test. D Direct physical interactions between LR pairs and developmental related genes. These genes contribute to the caudal-rostral gradient and to functional specialization. Source data are provided in a Source data file.