Fig. 4: RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis and immunohistochemistry data indicate the unique expression of striatal parvalbumin (PV) interneurons in Akt1 heterozygous (HET) mice in Experiment 5.

A Three-dimensional plot illustrating the principal component analysis (PCA) on the RNA-seq dataset comparing Akt1 heterozygous (HET) mice and wild-type (WT) mice (n = 4 each). B Volcano plot displaying the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the striatum of HET and WT mice, showing log 2-fold change on the x-axis and false discovery rate-adjusted p-value on the y-axis. The top 10 modulated DEGs are highlighted with gene names (red: up-regulation; blue: down-regulation), including Akt1, parvalbumin (PV), and Ascl1. C Relative expression level (mean ± SEM) of genes of interest between HET and WT mice using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). D Representative images and immunohistochemistry results (mean ± SEM) for PV-positive neuron densities in the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) between HET and WT mice. Consistent with results from RNA-seq analysis and qPCR, a significant reduction of PV interneurons was confirmed in the DMS of HET mice. *p < 0.05.