Fig. 4: Nonlinear gene expression trajectories in aging mouse colon.

a Pie charts illustrating the gene proportions within specific clusters relative to all differentially expressed genes (top). Gene expression trajectories during aging as Z-scores (bottom). Blue shading—cluster corresponding to early-to-mid-life transition, red shading—clusters corresponding to mid-to-late-life transition. b Genes overlapping with at least one CpG following early-to-mid-life or mid-to-late-life methylation trajectory were intersected with genes following the same type of transition on gene expression level. * - only genes covered in the RRBS dataset were included in the analysis. c Top five genes with the highest number of CpGs undergoing either early-to-mid-life transition (left) or mid-to-late-life transition (right) were selected from the intersection sets depicted in b. Each smoothed line corresponds to one CpG. Colored dots represent the mean TPM for an age group. * - the same set of CpGs was annotated to 6820408C15Rik (Supplementary Fig. 5) d STRING protein–protein interaction network created from genes following a mid-to-late-life trajectory on both DNA methylation and gene expression levels. Genes with known functions in the enteric nervous system, intestinal barrier, and/or colorectal cancer are marked with specific coloring. Supplementary Table 1 contains corresponding references related to the functions of genes from the network. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.