Dissect Relationships Between Gene Co-expression and Functional Connectivity in Human Brain

作者：Xue Zhang, Yingying Xie, Jie Tang, Wen Qin, Feng Liu, Hao Ding, Yuan Ji, Bingbing Yang, Peng Zhang, Wei Li, Zhaoxiang Ye, Chunshui Yu · 发表于：Frontiers in Neuroscience · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.3389/fnins.2021.797849 · 被引用次数：12 · 研究领域：Functional Brain Connectivity Studies、Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications、Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks

Although recent evidence indicates an association between gene co-expression and functional connectivity in human brain, specific association patterns remain largely unknown. Here, using neuroimaging-based functional connectivity data of living brains and brain-wide gene expression data of postmortem brains, we performed comprehensive analyses to dissect relationships between gene co-expression and functional connectivity. We identified 125 connectivity-related genes (20 novel genes) enriched for dendrite extension, signaling pathway and schizophrenia, and 179 gene-related functional connections mainly connecting intra-network regions, especially homologous cortical regions. In addition, 51 genes were associated with connectivity in all brain functional networks and enriched for action potential and schizophrenia; in contrast, 51 genes showed network-specific modulatory effects and enriched for ion transportation. These results indicate that functional connectivity is unequally affected by gene expression, and connectivity-related genes with different biological functions are involved in connectivity modulation of different networks.