Fig. 2. RNA Sequencing analysis and functional interpretation.

a Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of 2,000 most variable genes based on correlation distance (average linkage) method. Replicates for each group were from independent differentiation batches. b Principal component analysis (PCA) cluster PECs closer to Epi^P1 as compared to Epi^H9. c MA plots of differential expression analysis for PEC vs Epi^H9 (i) and Epi^P1 vs Epi^H9 (ii) comparisons. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) are highlighted as red dots for upregulation and blue dots for downregulation (adjusted p value < 0.05 and absolute fold change ≥ 2). Functional clustering of gene ontology terms for biological processes for both up and downregulated DEGs for PEC vs Epi^H9 and Epi^P1 vs Epi^H9 comparisons. DEGs were determined using DeSeq2 and analyzed using the Wald test with Benjamini-Hochberg multiple comparison corrections. FDR value = 0.05 was used as to determine the statistical significance.