Figure 2. CVS-induced DEGs in the mPFC of SSTCre:γ2^f/f stress resilient male mice are fewer and distinct from those of SSTCre controls.

A) Experimental design. B) The average number of CVS induced DEGs (p < 0.01) determined from subsamples of mice revealed fewer CVS-induced DEGs in SSTCre:γ2^f/f vs. SSTCre mice (p = 0.013, n = 4, t-test) C) Volcano plot of CVS induced DEGs (p < 0.01) in mPFC of SSTCre male mice (n = 5–6), along with heat map comparing the CVS-induced transcriptional changes of DEGs in SSTCre controls (log₂FC, top) to those of SSTCre:γ2^f/f mice. Blue and red dots and lines indicate downregulated and upregulated genes, p value cutoff, respectively. Note that the CVS-induced DEGs of SSTCre mice were randomly affected by CVS in SSTCre:γ2^f/f mice. D) Volcano plot of CVS induced DEGs (p < 0.01) in SSTCre:γ2^f/f males (n = 3–4) along with heat maps comparing transcriptional changes of CVS exposed SSTCre:γ2^f/f male mice to those of SSTCre controls. Again, CVS-induced DEGs observed in SSTCre:γ2^f/f mice were randomly affected by CVS in SSTCre mice. E) PCA analysis revealed clear separation of male and female samples after batch normalization and two outliers among male samples were removed in all analyses. Circles indicate 95% CI. F–H) Analyses of female mice analogous to males. The number of CVS-induced DEGs in female mice (p < 0.01) in SSTCre and SSTCre:γ2^f/f mice analyzed by subsampling of mice was unaffected by genotype (n = 100, Welch’s t-test) (F). CVS-induced DEGs in the mPFC of female SSTCre mice show comparable directional changes of expression in SSTCre:γ2^f/f mice (n = 5) (G) and the CVS-induced DEGs in SSTCre:γ2^f/f mice are similarly affected by CVS in SSTCre controls (H).