Fig. 5
Transcriptional dynamics in the nucleus accumbens of animals chronically drinking ethanol treated with the SCFAs combination or the vehicle. Male UChB rats, voluntarily consuming a 10% ethanol solution for 58 days, were treated with either a combination of SCFAs (300 mg/kg each sodium acetate, sodium propionate and sodium butyrate) or 554 mg/kg NaCl solution (vehicle), by oral gavage twice-daily for five days. An additional group of untreated animals drinking only water (naïve) was used as a control. After the last administration animals were euthanized and the nucleus accumbens was dissected for RNA-seq determinations. (A–C) Volcano plots of differentially expressed genes display the up-regulated (red dots) and down-regulated (light blue dots) genes. Gray dots indicate no significant changes among the different conditions for (A) Ethanol-Naïve vs. Chronic Ethanol conditions, (B) Chronic Ethanol vs. SCFAs conditions and (C) Ethanol-Naïve vs. SCFAs conditions. (D) Heatmap of the differentially expressed genes that were found common among Ethanol-Naïve vs. Chronic Ethanol and Chronic Ethanol vs. SCFAs conditions. (E–G) Bubble plots representing the functional enrichment analysis of differentially expressed genes. GO biological processes terms were classified based on up- and down-regulated expression changes. Only GO terms with a p-value < 0.05 were included in the analysis for (E) Ethanol-Naïve vs Chronic Ethanol conditions, (F) Chronic Ethanol vs SCFA conditions and (G) Ethanol-Naïve vs SCFAs conditions. Data were obtained from four animals per experimental condition.
