FIGURE 2—

Social regulation of gene expression in human immune cells.

Note. Red = high expression; black = intermediate expression; green = low expression. Expression of 22 283 human gene transcripts was assayed in approximately 10 million blood leukocytes sampled from each of 14 older adults who showed consistent differences over 4 years in their level of subjective social isolation. Two hundred nine gene transcripts showed differences of 30% or more in average expression level in leukocytes from 6 people experiencing chronic social isolation versus 8 people experiencing consistent social integration. In this heat plot, each row represents data from 1 of the 14 study participants, each column contains expression values for 1 of the 209 differentially active genes, and the coloring of each cell represents the relative level of that gene’s expression in a given participant’s leukocyte sample.

Source. Adapted from Cole et al.²⁰