Fig. 2. Chronic cortisol treatment in astrocytes has a unique transcriptomic signature present 24 h after last dose.

a Schematic of acute vs chronic cortisol treatment experimental paradigm. Under chronic conditions, astrocytes are treated with 5 µM cortisol or vehicle every 48 h for 7 days and collected for experiments 24 h after the last dose. In the acute condition, astrocytes are given one treatment 24 h before collection. b Expression of GR following acute or chronic cortisol treatment measured via RT-qPCR. Log₂fold change over own vehicle control graphed as mean ± SEM; n = 6 with 3 replicates in 2 individuals. c Volcano plots depicting differentially expressed genes (DEGs) upregulated (green dots) or downregulated (purple dots) following treatment with cortisol; n = 2 individuals. d Expression of genes known to be regulated by cortisol in vivo that are DEGs in our samples. Expression represented as log₂fold change over vehicle. e Venn diagram comparison of the number of DEGs unique to each treatment and those that overlap. F Top categories from Gene Ontology (GO) analysis of DEGs unique to chronic cortisol (334 genes); bars represent the log P value of the term and numbers within the bar represent the genes in our list under that term.