We used RNA-seq to examine the pattern of gene expression in the DRN of peri-adolescent male P rats that had consumed large amounts of ethanol in a repeated binge pattern over a 3-week period (post-natal days 28 to day 49). Post-natal day 28 coincides with the beginning of adolescence, which ends at approximately day 42 in female rats and day 45 in male rats (Bell et al., 2013; Spear, 2010). The average consumption was approximately 8 g/kg per day for the 5 drinking days of each week (McBride et al., 2014). These levels of intake meet the criterion for binge-drinking put forth by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA, 2004), blood ethanol levels ≥ 80mg%. There were 12,047 genes detectably expressed in the DRN, of which 3,567 genes (30%) were differentially expressed between ethanol exposed and control animals (at FDR ≤ 0.05; Supplementary Table 1 lists all genes with differential expression). Among the differentially expressed genes, 1391 (39%) had absolute fold changes >1.5 (Figure 1).
