We also tried to confirm the increased expression of MAP3K7 mRNA detected in the SZ neurons by RNA-seq. Although a similar increase in expression was found in the SZ neurons – 16.3% for the RNA-seq and 13.3% for qPCR - the latter was not statistically significant. This was not especially surprising since the relatively small increase in MAP3K7 expression found in the RNA-seq analysis challenges the sensitivity of qPCR. It should be noted, however, that the enrichment of genes involved in MAP kinase signaling detected in our pathway analysis was likely due to the combination of small differences in the expression of many genes, rather than a large difference in expression in a small number of genes.
