Fig. 4.

(A) Heatmap of the expression intensities in the individual samples of the most significant 384 genes detected on the basis of the threshold of false discovery rate cutoff of 0.005. Hierarchical clustering based on Pearson's correlation coefficient was conducted among the 384 genes. SC = spinal cord. Taxol = paclitaxel. (B) Quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (qRT–PCR) analysis of total RNA performed in triplicates isolated from all 12 spinal cord samples used in a microarray study (6 from paclitaxel-treated rats and 6 from paclitaxel + MDA7 14 d–treated rats). Data were normalized relative to Gapdh and expressed as fold change relative to paclitaxel treatment without MDA7. The RNA fold change matches the trend seen in microarray data. Further, Western blotting analysis revealed that MDA7 treatment for 14 days significantly attenuated the upsurge of phosphorylation of extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK)1/2 (C, D) and IκBα (E, F), and down-regulated Toll-like receptors 2 (TLR2) expression (G,H) but did not affect TLR4 (G, H) expression in the spinal cord of the rats with paclitaxel treatment. * = P<0.05.