Fig. 5

Heatmap of functional differences between the acute and chronic lesional in vivo neurovascular units (NVUs), and in vitro brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs). Gene ontology terms were queried into six functional groups based on a systematic literature review of CCM disease. Functional groups included cellular proliferation (green), inflammation and immune response (maroon), permeability and adhesion (grey), neuron, glia and pericyte functions (light blue), apoptosis and oxidative stress (yellow), and vascular processes (light brown). Five clusters including cellular proliferation processes were identified in the acute in vivo NVUs. In the chronic in vivo NVUs, four clusters were related to inflammation, immune response, permeability, and adhesion functions. In the lesional NVUs excluding in vitro BMECs, three clusters were identified including neural, glial, and pericyte functions clusters. In the in vitro BMECs, two functional clusters were observed and did not included specific functions. Clustering of the groups were based on their Euclidean distance. The statistical significance in the heatmap was calculated and presented based on the -log10 false discovery rate (FDR) corrected p-values (Red significant, blue not significant)