Molecular and immunological heterogeneity of eosinophilic esophagitis: Insights and subtyping
Fig 2
Volcano plots illustrating differential gene expression between healthy controls and patients with various esophageal conditions.
(A) Conventional EoE (ce) shows a high number of significantly upregulated and downregulated genes with genes such as ALOX15, LOC105375905 and POSTN exhibiting relatively large fold changes. (B) EoE-like esophagitis (el) presents moderate differential expression patterns with genes such as LOC105375905 and SLC6A19. (C) Lymphocytic esophagitis (ly) shows fewer significant changes, with some notable upregulated genes such as LOC105375905, TRIM15 and ZIC4. (D) Nonspecific esophagitis (ns) displays distinct gene expression patterns with significant upregulation and downregulation of LOC105375905, SLC6A19 and C11orf86. Red dots represent genes that meet significance thresholds for both p-value and fold change, while blue and green represent genes meeting one of the thresholds. Note: Apparent differences in the contour (“belt shape”) of the plots reflect the inherent distribution of differential expression within each patient group, rather than methodological variation. (E) Heatmap showing the expression profiles of the top 50 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) across samples. Rows represent individual genes, while columns correspond to patient samples from various conditions. The color gradient indicates expression levels, with red denoting upregulation and blue denoting downregulation.