Figure 3.

Classes of GDNF-regulated genes. We manually classified the 195 GDNF-regulated genes as well as 303 genes selected at random from the microarrays. The graph shows all of the major classes of genes in two aligned rings (inner ring, GDNF; outer ring, all genes). About half of the genes in either group were unknown and showed no useful homologies to previously described genes (omitted from graph). Among the rest, there was a clear bias toward gene/protein expression among the GDNF-regulated genes (+44% compared with all genes) at the expense of genes related to metabolism (−33%). There was also a smaller than average percentage of genes related to defense (−20%) and cell structure (−19%), whereas the remaining categories showed only small differences (<15%).