Verification by Quantitative Real-Time PCR 
We conducted TaqMan (qRT-PCR) analysis [23] of 11 differentially expressed genes to validate selected microarray hybridization results (see Table S2 for genes and primer-probe sequences).
Five genes chosen for validation demonstrated statistically significant fold changes in expression by microarray analysis (PF value < 0.05; two upregulated, three downregulated).
The remaining six genes (four upregulated, two downregulated) did not have significant PF values, but were statistically significant as members of particular neighbor clusters in subsequent analyses (PE < 0.05) as detailed in later sections).
We averaged the data to generate a value for each gene, creating a set of 11 paired values from quantitative real-time (qRT)-PCR and microarray analyses (Table S3).
Results of standard linear regression analysis demonstrated a strong positive correlation (r = 0.9) between data obtained using the different techniques (see Figure S1).
