Figure 4.

Gene-level characterization of macrophage transcriptome changes favoring neurovascular plasticity in the post-stroke brain. DEGs in macrophages from the dMCAO brain versus dMCAO blood were analyzed for their potential influence on post-stroke neurovascular plasticity. (a) DEGs related to neurovascular plasticity were manually annotated according to the type and subcellular localization of gene products. The top 10 genes were shown under each category according to the adjusted p-value, from lowest to highest. The complete gene list is provided in Supplementary Table 8. (b) Heatmaps showing the expression profiles of four clusters of genes whose products are in the extracellular space. Data were expressed as log2 transformation of fold changes in dMCAO brain versus dMCAO blood (first row), and dMCAO blood versus sham blood (second row). (c, d) Genes related to ECM remodeling (c) and neurovascular unit changes (d) were explored for their association with eight functional subcategories. Shown are genes associated with at least two subcategories, displayed as Circos plots. (e) Heatmap of the expression profile of 32 DEGs related to cell movement, cell–cell adhesion, and monocyte–vessel interactions, which were upregulated in macrophages in the dMCAO brain compared to those in the dMCAO blood. (f) The DEGs were manually annotated to functional categories of cell movement and cell–cell interactions.

ECM: extracellular matrix; dMCAO: distal middle cerebral artery occlusion.