Fig. 2

Network of miRNAs associated with phenotypes. a The relationships between miRNA expression and various demographic and technical features as well as neuropathologic outcomes are displayed in a network diagram. All miRNA with a significant (p < 0.00016) or suggestive (p < 0.05) association are included in the network. These relationships were extracted via feature selection from linear models which explain an miRNA’s expression level by using age at death (Age), neuronal composition (NNLS), sex, study of origin (Study, ROS or MAP), post-mortem interval (PMI), RNA integrity number (RIN), neuritic amyloid plaques (NP), neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and pathological AD diagnosis (AD). Each node in the diagram represents an miRNA (small circles) or a demographic or a neuropathologic variable (large circles). The significantly associated miRNA (Table 1) are represented by rectangles. A red edge represents a positive association between the miRNA and trait; a blue edge denotes an inverse association. As most of the miRNAs are associated with RIN, the associations with RIN were removed from this figure for clarity. b The correlations between the expression levels of eight miRNA and lincRNA with significant associations in our study are shown, along with correlations with the outcome variables (NP, NFT and AD). Each of the correlations are displayed in each cell of the correlation map and is colored by the strength of correlation, red for positive associations and blue for negative associations