Whole saliva expression data from human populations stratified by psychosocial stress exposure

The objective of this study was analysis of the whole saliva transcriptome to search for biomarkers of psychosocial stressor exposure and substance use in young adults drawn from a population-based longitudinal cohort, the Oregon Youth Substance Use Project. We conducted genome-wide gene expression analysis on whole saliva RNA from 48 individuals stratified by psychosocial stressor exposure using an Affymetrix Gene ST 1.0 array. We applied Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WCGNA) to characterize the high-level structure in the data and to relate expression patterns among samples to participant clinical characteristics. This approach finds clusters of correlated genes (modules) which can reflect clinical, histological, or intracellular organization and function.

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