Fig. 1: Differences and characterizations in mRNA expression profiles between pancreatic cancer cell line PANC-1-alone control groups (NPC groups) and the PANC-1-co-cultured TAMs groups (NPM groups).

a Scatter plots are used to evaluate the difference in the expression of mRNAs between the NPC groups and the NPM groups. The values plotted on X and Y axes are the averaged normalized signal values of each group (log2 scaled). The middle green line refers to no difference between the two groups, and the flanking green lines represent twofold changes. The mRNAs above the top green line and below the bottom green line indicate more than twofold changes between the two groups. b Box plots for the normalized gene expression data of the NPC groups and the NPM groups. c Volcano plots used for visualizing differential expression between two different conditions. The vertical lines correspond to twofold (log2 scaled) up and down, respectively, and the horizontal line represents a p value of 0.05 (−log10 scaled). The red points in plot represent the differentially expressed mRNAs with statistical significance. d Hierarchical cluster analysis of all target mRNAs. The mean entities of all target mRNAs, where at least three out of six samples have flags in present or marginal. Flags are attributes that denote the quality of the entities using methods from GeneSpring software. e Hierarchical cluster analysis of the top 30 up and downregulated mRNAs. Red and green colors represent up- and downregulated genes, respectively. f The top 10 upregulated mRNAs are listed by fold change, among which the cell adhesion molecule VCAM-1 was the most upregulated gene with ~ 7.07-fold change