Fig. 3

Dramatic changes of Hox family gene expression in early ESCC. A Volcano plot showing the DEGs between tumor and normal tissue in 10 pairs of early ESCC. B KEGG enrichment of top 500 upregulation in tumor tissue. C GSEA enrichment of E2F target and EMT geneset in tumor. D Heatmap showing the differentially expressed transcription factors; TF list was downloaded from AnimalTFDB database. E Boxplot showing the differentially expressed Hox family between tumor and normal tissue, T-test, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. F The relative expression of HOX family genes was detected by RT-qPCR. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. *** p < 0.001, average ± SEM, paired t test. G Heatmap showing the expression fold change (tumor vs normal) of Hox family in (H) in early ESCC and TCGA-ESCC-early cohort. I Regulated network of Hoxc10 predicted by GENIE3. H Barplot showing KEGG[18] and GO BP enrichment of top 500 predicted Hoxc10 target