Fig. 1

Transcriptomic changes in normal appearing white matter. a Schematic overview of the experiment. b Principal component analysis of 68 white matter brain tissue samples. Colors depict donor groups. Shapes depict sex. c Volcano plots depicting differential gene expression between NAWM vs CWM samples (left), WML vs NAWM samples (center) and WML vs CWM samples (right). Colored symbols indicate significantly differentially expressed genes (logFC > 1 and adjusted p value < 0.05). d Dot plot depicting the 10 most significant gene ontology analyses associated with DEGs from the comparisons indicated below. Size depicts number of genes in gene ontology set, color scale depicts significance level. e Bar plot depicting expression-weighted gene set enrichment analysis of DEGs between NAWM versus CWM (left) and WML vs CWM (right) based on cell type specific gene signatures derived from human snRNAseq study (Gerrits et al. 2021). *: p < 0.05; Abbreviations: CWM = control white matter (CTR donors); NAWM = normal appearing white matter (MS donors); WML = white matter lesion (MS donors)