Abstract
The functions of human brains highly depend on the precise temporal regulation of gene expression, and substantial transcriptome changes across lifespan have been observed. The substantial transcriptome alteration in neural disorders like autism has also been observed and is thought to be important for the pathology. While the cell type composition is known to be variable in brains, it remains unclear how it contributes to the temporal and pathological transcriptome changes in brains. Here, we applied the transcriptome deconvolution procedure to the age series RNA-seq data of healthy and autism samples, to quantify the contribution of cell type composition in shaping the temporal and autism pathological transcriptome in human brains. We estimated that composition change was the primary factor of both transcriptome changes. On the other hand, genes with substantial composition-independent expression changes were also observed in both cases. Those temporal and autism pathological composition-independent changes, many of which are related to synaptic functions, indicate the important intracellular regulatory changes in human brains in both processes.