  Two cliques of genes identified computationally for their high co-expression
in the mouse brain according to the Allen Brain Atlas, and for their enrichment
in genes related to autism spectrum disorder, have recently been shown to be
highly co-expressed in the cerebellar cortex, compared to what could be
expected by chance. Moreover, the expression of these cliques of genes is not
homogeneous across the cerebellum, and it has been noted that their gene
expression pattern seems to highlight the granular layer. However, this
observation was only made by eye, and recent advances in computational
neuroanatomy allow to rank cell types in the mouse brain (characterized by
their transcriptome profiles) according to the similarity between their density
profiles and the expression profiles of the cliques. We establish by Monte
Carlo simulation that with probability at least 99 percent, the expression
profiles of the two cliques are more similar to the density profile of granule
cells than 99 percent of the expression of cliques containing the same number
of genes (Purkinje cells also score above 99 percent in one of the cliques).
Thresholding the expression profiles shows that the signal is more intense in
the granular layer.
