Fig. 4

Technical validation of 19 randomly selected differentially expressed genes (DEGs) detected by RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) using qRT-PCR. (a) Relative heatmaps of RNA-seq and qRT-PCR. Gene expression from the two platforms was normalized by the quantile normalization method. (b) Box-plots of 19 DEGs detected by qRT-PCR. The y-axis represents the gene expression level, which is the −2^∆ΔCt value of qRT-PCR compared to the control gene