To understand how differences in AUD-associated chromatin accessibility might influence gene expression, we compared the magnitude and direction of differences chromatin accessibility to the differences in gene expression for genes that had at least 1 DAR (FDR < 0.2) in the promoter region, a total of 4915 genes across all cell types. The AUD-associated DARs and DEGs were in the same direction for most genes in the four largest cell clusters (88%, 90%, 73%, and 77% in oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, D1 neurons, and D2 neurons, respectively). Genes containing DARs were enriched among DEGs in the same four cell types (FDR <1e-8; Fig. 3c–f). These results suggest that AUD-associated differences in chromatin accessibility can potentially lead to a corresponding change in cis-gene expression.
