Co-expression relationships for other vital gene families are less understood. Neurons attain type-specific electrophysiological properties by expressing combinations of voltage-gated ion channels (Marder and Goaillard, 2006), but we know little about what combinations of channels enact neurons’ distinct physiological properties (Tripathy et al., 2017). We therefore evaluated expression pattern correlations for 71 voltage-gated potassium (VGK) and sodium (VGNA) channel genes across neuronal populations, focusing on the alpha (pore-forming) subunits. We observed strong correlation blocks involving specific subsets of VGK and VGNA genes (Figure 4C).
