Fig. 3: Prediction of core chronological pathway by dynamic molecular network analysis with iMAD.

a Concept of iMAD. Impact of a gene at time point 1 on the connected genes at time point 2 was evaluated, based on the assumption that the change of an impactful gene would influence relevant genes of a significantly larger number than the background change of all genes at the following time point. The left image is representative of an impactful gene, and the right image is representative of a nonimpactful gene. b DEGs were selected by | Log2FC | > 0.5 by DESeq2, and impactful genes were selected by iMAD with statistical significance (p < 0.05 in Fisher’s exact test with post-hoc BH procedure: FDR < 5%).