Fig. 2.

Cellular functions of the exercise-specific response. Bar charts showing over-representation of functional categories (described by KEGG and REACTOME pathways and Gene Ontology: Biological Process, Molecular Function and Cellular Component) for the list of genes (n = 2216) that showed statistically significant differential expression, of at least +/− 1.25-fold, between the muscle tissue (gluteus medius) from the untrained rest (UR) and the untrained exercise (UE) but not the trained rest (TR) Thoroughbred cohorts. Bars represent the most significant functional modules (up to 20) for each of the five annotation schemas. Bar height represents statistical significance (−log ₁₀ transformed Benjamini-Hochberg (B-H) Corrected P-value) of the over-representation, based on the EASE-score (conservative Fisher Exact t-test). Bar color represents the mean differential expression (log₂(UE/UR) for the genes in this module (see color key). Category name, ID and size (number category genes in gene list/category size) are given above each bar. For example it can be seen that the most significant Reactome pathway is ‘Muscle contraction’ and that it is one of the most down-regulated functional categories on average (blue color) and that 16 out of the 31 genes assigned to this category are differentially expressed between UE and UR cohorts only (i.e. not differentially expressed between TR and UR cohorts). Full results are provided in Additional file 2: Table S4