Fig. 4

Surgery exacerbated the decrease in neurogenesis in aging mice. A, B Pathways enriched in genes upregulated in young and aging mice post-surgery relative to their age-matched controls. C, D Pathways enriched in genes downregulated in young and aging mice post-surgery relative to their age-matched controls. E In the gene enrichment study, the grey pie represents the proportion of ‘neurogenesis’ (GO:0022008) ontology term-related genes in the genome, and the black area represents the rest of the genome. The green and purple pies represent the proportion of genes (darker color) related to the GO:0022008 term among the genes that are downregulated in young (green) and aging (purple) mice post-surgery compared to their age-matched controls. F-I qPCR verification of representative genes enriched in ‘neurogenesis’ (GO:0022008) GO term among differentially expressed genes in aging mice post-surgery relative to age-matched controls (n = 6, per group). J Confocal images of DCX antibody immunofluorescence staining (Blue, Hoechst 33342; Green, DCX; n = 5, per group). Top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right are representative images from YC, YS, AC, and AS mouse groups, respectively. K Effects of aging and surgery on DCX positive cell density (relative to young control). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 for two-way ANOVA followed by Games-Howell test. Data are presented as means ± S.D. (n = 5)