Figure 1.

Microarray data analysis flowchart. Altogether, 80 human, mouse and rat Affymetrix datasets were analyzed (dataset selection criteria: > 16 samples per dataset; BDNF detection call PRESENT in more than 70% of the samples). Data was subjected to non-specific filtering (missing values and 2-fold change filtering). Thereafter, datasets were divided into 299 corresponding subsets. Co-expression analysis in human, mouse and rat subsets allowed the detection of genes that co-expressed with BDNF in more than 3 subsets (~1000 genes for each species). As a result of co-expression conservation analysis, 84 genes were found to be correlated with BDNF in all three species. Discovery of over-represented motifs in the regulatory regions of these genes and in BDNF suggested novel regulators of BDNF gene expression.