Figure 2.

Overview on the detected miRNA expression changes within early CD4+ T cell activation. (A) Overview on the number of miRNAs that were detected by time-resolved expression profiling. Significantly changed miRNAs were identified for each donor. Out of these, 39 miRNAs showed a median fold change larger 1.5 in both donors and were defined as potential candidates for the general regulation of early T cell activation signaling. (B) The identified 39 miRNA candidates showed a high correlation for a donor-wise comparison between the time-resolved miRNA expression data (log₂) of the three separate T cell activation reactions per time point (denoted as A, B and C) and for the comparison between the median results of the two donors (n = 507 comparisons each). Regression equations and coefficients (R²) are indicated. (C) Grouping of the 39 miRNAs into classes of similar time-resolved expression patterns The analysis was based on the median result of all RNA samples from donor 1 and 2 (n = 6) per time point. Clusters were calculated using the ILP formulation by Grötschel and Wakabayashi in combination with a hierarchical clustering (B and A). The red line indicates the cut off, used to create the final clustering. The heatmap (C) shows scaled log₂ expression values for each miRNA with the resulting classes of time-resolved expression patterns (D).