Figure 2.

DEGs and functional pathways in the vein to AVF transformation. (a) Volcano plot representation of 3637 DEGs in AVFs compared with their corresponding preaccess veins (pairwise comparisons). Changes in gene expression are presented as log₂(fold change) in AVFs with respect to veins. Red dots indicate upregulated genes in AVFs (log₂ fold change ≥ 1, false discovery rate < 0.05), and blue dots are genes downregulated in fistulas (log₂ fold change ≤ −1, false discovery rate < 0.05). (b) Distribution of functions in 2678 DEGs with functional classifications available. (c) Pathway enrichment analyses of DEGs indicating activated and suppressed biological processes during the vein to AVF transformation. Biological processes are organized by gene ratio on the x-axis (also known as enrichment ratio), which is defined as the ratio of DEGs annotated in a term (count) to the total number of genes in this process in genome-wide annotation packages. DEG, Differentially expressed gene; EC, endothelial cell; ECM, extracellular matrix; SMC, smooth muscle cell.