Figure 3.

A mixed-species co-culture system enables the identification of neuron-independent and neuron-dependent programs of astrocyte development. (A) Schematic of the bioinformatic approach to identify gene sets. (B) Volcano plot showing significance versus log₂fold-change depicting RNA-Seq data comparing day 35 and day 21 mES_astrocyte transcriptomes (n = 3, p < 0.05, fold-change > 2). (C) Comparison of DEGs shown in (B) with genes differentially expressed in co-cultures to identify neuron-independent and neuron-dependent genes, shown by green and yellow circles, respectively. (D,E) GO terms of top genes from both sets (p < 0.01). Heatmap showing expression levels of (F) neuron-independent and (G) neuron-dependent gene sets in human astrocytes at different ages, from fetal to 60 years. Detailed gene lists used for heatmap generation are given in Table S1.