The Github Repository For Analyses Of Hippocampal Transcriptomic Responses To Technical And Biological Perturbations

Many factors contribute to variation in gene expression. These data were collected to examine common sources of variation in gene expression that are influenced by the experimental design. How does technique for sample collection affect neural gene expression? How does the stress accompanying cognitive paradigms alter transcription? In answer to these questions, we identified are largely distinct response of the hippocampus transcriptome to specific perturbations, with some important confounding overlap. It is encouraging that the overlap between cellular dissociation and cognitive training is small, indicating that these technical and biological processes affect different transcriptional processes. It is also encouraging to know that the stressful experience had no substantial effect on hippocampal gene expression, which if generalizable to other tasks will allow for using behavioral control groups and behavioral manipulations that also induce modest, potentially confounding stress. Our bioinformatic workflow is reproducible and incorporates public data from a published study that cataloged subfield-specific gene expression in the hippocampus. These findings provide insight into how cellular and biological manipulations influence gene expression.