FIGURE 1.

Differentially expressed genes indicated alteration of metabolic pathways, immune response and cell stress in sALS peripheral blood. (A) Volcano plot comparing sALS patients with controls. Pink and green dots represent genes that were upregulated and downregulated, respectively (FDR < 0.05) while grey dots are genes that were not differentially expressed. (B) GO biological processes and KEGG pathways enriched in the sALS–control differentially expressed genes. The most representative member (lowest p‐value) of each GO term cluster is displayed. Log2 fold change indicates enrichment of member genes in differentially expressed genes vs all detected genes. (C) Example IPA upstream analysis network for transcription factor STAT1, which was predicted to be activated in sALS. Red genes were upregulated and green genes were downregulated in sALS vs controls. Orange arrows indicate predicted activation, blue lines indicate predicted inhibition and grey arrows indicate no effect predicted. (D) Biological pathways predicted by IPA to have altered activity in sALS based on differentially expressed genes. Individual bubbles represent ingenuity canonical pathways (x‐axis), which have been categorised into their member biological pathways (y‐axis). Orange and blue bubbles represent pathways predicted to be activated or inhibited, respectively (z‐score). The bubble size represents the p‐value, which indicates the probability of association of differentially expressed genes with the ingenuity canonical pathway by random chance alone (right‐tailed Fisher's exact test).