Fig. 5

Functional characterisation of genes differentially regulated following acrylamide exposure. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis was used to annotate genes that were differentially regulated (fold-change ≥1.5 or ≤ 0.67 and an adjusted p (p.adj) value ≤0.1) following acrylamide treatment. Heat maps depict the top A canonical signalling pathways based on –log10 p values, B 10 biological and disease functions based on number of target molecules in dataset, and C 20 upstream regulators based on –log10 p values. To explore their regulation, D upstream regulators that were predicted to be activated (Z-score ≥ 2) or inhibited (Z-score ≤ − 2) with p ≤ 0.05 are represented as heat maps based on Z-score value. E Differentially expressed genes following acrylamide exposure (red = up regulated) that are documented to be regulated by key activated (red central molecule) or inhibited (blue central molecule) upstream regulators are presented in an interaction network taking into account cellular localisation. Connecting lines indicate predicted relationships that lead to activation (orange), and relationship is known but effects on function is yet to be completely characterised (gray). Initial construction of the network was created in Ingenuity Pathway Analysis and schematics were redrawn using BioRender software (BioRender). Heatmaps were generated using Prism (version 9.0.0)