Statistical analyses
Statistical analyses were performed by using the statistical language R
(www.R-project.org). The quality of samples was assessed using FastQC.
Each sample was aligned to the human reference genome by using STAR
(open-source aligner).40 Mapped sequencing reads were
assigned to genomic features using the featureCounts function. Counts
were transformed to log scale by voom-transform and fit in a linear
model.41 Fold-changes (FCHs) were estimated, and
hypothesis testing was conducted by using contrasts under the general
framework for linear models in the limma package. P-values were adjusted
for multiple hypotheses by using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure,
controlling for false discovery rate (FDR). Genes with FCH≥2 and
FDR<0.05 were considered DEGs.