Figure 5

The minimal connectivity of genes increased in the odontoblast layer (ODL) and pulp of carious teeth. This network shows known direct or one off interactions between genes measured to be significantly upregulated in this study. For each gene, the expression level (inverse of PCR threshold cycle) in ODL (A) and pulp (B) of carious teeth is rendered as node size. Differential expression in ODL (A) and pulp (B) of carious teeth versus normal teeth (fold increase) is depicted as a color heat map with white showing no change and saturated blue meaning greater up-regulation in carious ODL (A) and pulp (B). Network bottlenecks are highlighted in red, signifying the most important candidate inflammatory signal mediators: PIK3R1, IL1R1, TLR4, ARRβ1, CCL5, CCR5, IL8, JAK1, JAK2, RELA, and TYK2. The key receptors for inflammatory signals induced by caries in ODL appear to converge through IL1R1, CCR5, and IL8Rα/β. The gene expression data used for building this map were derived from PCR arrays and qPCR verification data of cDNA arrays.