Bioinformatic analyses of IL21-modulated genes in activated CLL cells.

<p>(<i>a</i>) Volcano plot for the 12,166 genes detected by microarray analysis. The X-axis represents the fold-change, and the Y-axis represents the −log₁₀<i>p</i> value. A total of 582 probes (blue dots) were expressed differentially in IL21-treated, relative to untreated CLL cells, imposing an FDR < 0.01 and a fold-change > 1.5 or < 0.667. Global test: probability of obtaining at least 582 probes significant by chance if there were no real differences between the classes; <i>p</i> = 0.026. (<i>b</i>) The differentially expressed genes, as visualized by PCA, separated the samples in two well-defined groups corresponding to IL21-treated (blue) and untreated (red) cells. (<i>c</i>) WGCNA was performed on differentially expressed genes; clusters of like-regulated genes were referred to as modules by color (pink, green and blue). Those few genes (19) not included in the modules are in grey. In the heatmap, the intensity of red coloring indicates a high correlation of expression. (<i>d</i>) Eigengene dendogram and heatmap. Two correlated eigengenes, corresponding to MEgreen and MEblue, clustered together and differed from MEpink.