Fig. 4

α7 nAchR activation reduced LPS-induced inflammatory genes in astrocytes. a LPS-mediated inflammatory genes were measured using TaqMan® OpenArray® Mouse Inflammation Panel covering 632 inflammatory genes, and changes were plotted on a volcano plot with log fold changes on x-axis and log of corrected p values on y-axis. Red vertical lines indicate boundaries for fold changes. Green dots indicate at least 1.5-fold lower expression and red dots indicate at least 1.5-fold higher expression (both statistically significant at p < 0.05). Gray dots, plotted below the horizontal line, indicate statistically non-significant changes. Pretreatment of astrocytes with GTS21 (30 μm) for 1 h followed by LPS (60 ng/ml) treatment for 24 h resulted in a substantially lower number of inflammatory genes upregulation (fewer red dots in the lower panel) indicating a robust anti-inflammatory effect of α7 nAchR activation. b A gene set enrichment analysis was performed using the software package Generally Applicable Gene-set Enrichment (GAGE) in R Bioconductor based on the 214 differentially expressed inflammatory genes with GTS21 treatment to identify KEGG pathways enriched by the downregulation of inflammatory genes in the GTS21 plus LPS-treated samples compared to LPS alone treated samples. This plot shows the NF-κB signaling pathway, which was statistically significantly downregulated with GTS21 treatment (p value 0.04), along with specific genes that were downregulated in green shaded boxes