In contrast to D2, withdrawal of decitabine at D8 significantly downregulated the transcript expression levels of Mecp2e1 (1.92-fold, P <0.001), Mecp2e2 (1.39-fold, P <0.05) and the total Mecp2 (1.52-fold, P <0.01) (Figure 5D). Similar to the transcript levels, decitabine withdrawal resulted in downregulation of total MeCP2 (3.2-fold, P <0.001), and MeCP2E1 (4.3-fold, P <0.05) protein expression levels (Figure 5E-F). A similar correlation analysis between transcript and protein levels of Mecp2/MeCP2 at D8 did not show any statistically significant correlation (Mecp2/MeCP2 (r = 0.6, P = 0.2), and Mecp2e1/MeCP2E1 (r = 0.6, P = 0.3); Figure 5H). These observations emphasize that even minor change in Mecp2 transcript levels are biologically important and can result in significantly altered MeCP2 protein expression levels.
