Figure 3

(a) Boxplots, showing distributions of age-related heterogeneity changes (ρ values) of 11,1137 common genes for each dataset and period separately. The dotted red line (vertical line at x = 0) reflects no change in heterogeneity. The difference between median heterogeneity change in aging and development is given as a bar plot on the right panel. Datasets are ordered by the differences in median heterogeneity changes in aging and development. (b) The relationship between expression and heterogeneity change with age. Spearman correlation analysis was performed between age-related expression changes (β values) and age-related heterogeneity changes (ρ values) of 11,137 common genes, separately for each dataset. The dotted gray line at y = 0 reflects no correlation between expression and heterogeneity. (c) Expected and observed consistency in the heterogeneity change across datasets in development and aging. There is a significant shift toward heterogeneity increase in aging (lower panel), while there is no significant consistency in either direction in development (upper panel). The expected distribution is constructed using a permutation scheme that accounts for the dependence among datasets and is more stringent than random permutations (see Supplementary Fig. S10 for details).