Fig. 3

Exploratory analysis of patients using DPE (M vs H). MA plots for selected differentially present exons combining two different methods: quasi-likelihood F-tests (QLF) (A plot) and likelihood ratio tests (LRT) (B plot) for comparative M vs H. The log-fold change (FC) ratio is plotted on the y-axis, and the average normalized counts (counts per million; CPM) is plotted on the x-axis. Differentially present exons are highlighted in red (DPE; p ≤ 0.001) and a total of 14,430 exons were obtained with EdgeR. In the graph (C) we can see the grouping of the participants using the normalized values of differentially present exons (DPE) by Ward’s method. The participants are marked with different colors according to the group in which they were included: M: red, U: blue and H: yellow. Some of the metastatic patients were clearly separated from the healthy ones. However, the metastatic patients appear at the ends of the tree and the healthy controls in the middle, and the unclassifiable near the metastatic patients. A principal component analysis (PCA) can be seen in the two-dimensional (D) plot. Metastatic patients (M) and healthy controls (H) appear separated in a cloud of individual points. M (red) and H (yellow)