Fig. 3

Differentially expressed genes and pathways between CRSwNP + AS and CRSwNP-alone. a Volcano plots illustrating DE-mRNAs of CRSwNP + AS versus CRSwNP-alone identified by RNA sequencing. b Top 15 KEGG pathways (blue column) and top 5 BioCarta pathways (turquoise column) significantly enriched by DE-mRNAs. c The expression of arachidonic acid metabolism-related DE-mRNAs between CRSwNP + AS and CRSwNP-alone. The colour coding of heat maps represents the gene expression level normalized to Control group, calculated based on fragments per kilo-base of exon per million fragments mapped (FPKM). Yellow box indicates the up-regulated genes in CRSwNP + AS group. d The expression of critical cytokines and their receptors that indicated the activity of different inflammatory endotypes. Yellow stars represent significantly differentially expressed genes between CRSwNP + AS and CRSwNP-alone. P < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. CRSwNP chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps, AS asthma, DE differentially expressed, KEGG Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes