Fig. 7

Comparative analysis of GIT epithelial function at early life development stages of sika deer. PCA of all expressed genes in 5 rumen, jejunum, ileum, cecum, and colon among the three time points (a–c). PCA vector separates samples into GIT regions using fill color of circle (rumen: gray, jejunum: light blue, ileum: light green, cecum: pink, and colon: yellow) and age groups using outer line color (day 1: gray, day 42: blue, day 70: red) a and b. PCA vector separates samples into age groups using different filling color (day 1: gray, day 42: blue, day 70: red) in c. d Rose diagrams showing the numbers of DEGs in the five GIT regions. Pink and blue represent the up- and downregulated DEGs, respectively. The DEGs were determined by the fold change ≥ 2 and a Benjamini-Hochberg-adjusted P-value < 0.05. e Heat map showing the distribution of DEGs in rumen, jejunum, ileum, cecum, and colon (from bottom to top). Each row represents one sample, and each column represents one gene. Individuals are colored (blue to red) to indicate expression level (low to high). f Representative pathways enriched in upregulated DEGs based on functional enrichment analysis in five GIT regions. The vertical axis represents the pathway categories, and the horizontal axis shows the enrichment factor. The circle size represents the number of gene sets. The bigger the point size, the more genes in the pathway. The circle color indicates the logarithm of P-values calculated as the fraction of permutation values. The color legend at the left of heat map indicates the different comparisons