Fig. 2

CircRNA levels are depleted in lesion samples with respect to adjacent mucosa. A Volcano plots of the circRNA paired differential analysis reporting on the y-axis the -log10 adj. p-value and on the x-axis the extent of expression change (as log2FC) between lesion (adenoma on the left, and tumor on the right) and adjacent mucosa samples. Dot size is proportional to circRNA median expression. The red dashed line indicates the adj. p-value threshold of 0.05. Black dot border highlights the differentially expressed circRNAs. The labels identify the most significant up or downregulated circRNAs identified in adenoma and tumor analyses. B Scatter plot of the correlation levels of differentially expressed circRNAs between log2FC computed in the analysis of adenoma and tumor samples. C Boxplots reporting the concentration (copies/μL) of selected circRNAs in lesion and adjacent tissue samples measured by ddPCR (*p < 0.05 by Paired Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test). D Heatmap of the hierarchical clustering analysis of Z-score-normalized circRNA levels in all the analyzed samples. E Dot plot of circRNA differential expression analysis between lesions (adenoma (left) and CRC (right)) and their corresponding adjacent mucosa in patients stratified for different clinical and molecular data. Dot size is proportional to p-value, while the color code reflects the log2FC expression levels