Fig. 1
Expression patterns, enrichment analysis, and molecular subtypes of differentially expressed lactylation-related genes in periodontitis. (A) Volcano plot depicting the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between periodontitis patients and healthy controls. (B) Venn diagram showing the overlap of DEGs and lactylation-associated genes (LACAGs). Twelve genes were identified as both DEGs and LACAGs and defined as differentially expressed lactylation-associated genes (DE-LACAGs) for subsequent analysis. (C) Heatmap displaying the expression profiles of the 12 DE-LACAGs across individual samples. (D-G) Gene Ontology (GO) biological process enrichment (D), cellular component enrichment (E), molecular function enrichment (F), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment (G) analyses for DE-LACAGs. (H) Cophenetic coefficient plot for consensus clustering, indicating the optimal number of clusters (k = 2) for subtype identification based on DE-LACAG expression. (I) Consensus matrix heatmap of the unsupervised consensus clustering results, illustrating the stability and separation of the two identified molecular subtypes (Cluster1 and Cluster2). (J) Stacked bar plot showing the proportion of periodontitis and healthy samples within each NMF‑derived subtype.
