Fig. 5

The association between esophageal microbiota and predicted function. A The association between the differential microbiota and ESCC-related functional enzymes. B The correlation between the expression of PTEN by qRT-PCR and the abundance of unclassified species in the genus Phyllobacterium. C Volcano plot shows the differential MetaCyc metabolic pathways between tumor and tumor-adjacent tissues. The X-axis indicates the log₂(fold change), and the Y-axis indicates -log₁₀(FDR). The significant pathways enriched in tumor tissue (FDR < 0.05 and log₂ fold change> 2) are colored as red dots, that are increased in tumor-adjacent tissue (FDR < 0.05 and log₂ fold change<− 2) are colored as green dots. D, E The heatmap indicates the association between the differential MetaCyc metabolic pathways and microbiota in tumor tissue (D) and tumor-adjacent tissue (E)