Fig. 2

Expression levels of GH and GHR genes in pituitary and epiphyseal tissues from Debao ponies and Mongolian horses, as determined by RNA-seq. a Venn diagram showing the numbers of the DEGs in the comparisons between pituitary and epiphyseal tissues between the two breeds. b Volcano plots highlighting the DEGs in blue (P < 0.05) and red (q < 0.05) for the DPPJ vs MHPJ and DPLBJ vs MHLBJ comparisons DPPJ, juvenile Debao pony pituitary; MHPJ, juvenile Mongolian horse pituitary; DPLBJ, juvenile Debao pony long bone; MHLBJ, juvenile Mongolian horse long bone. c Integrative Genomics Viewer visualization of GH and GHR gene RNA-seq data from the DP and MH pituitary and long bone tissue samples. Red indicates the reference gene tracks (ENSECAG00000002986 GHR;ENSECAG00000009392 GH); yellow and blue indicate the GHR and GH gene RNA-seq data tracks, respectively; the Y-axis shows the different samples; the X-axis shows a genome coordinate ruler that indicates the size of the region considered. d Interactions of GH and GHR and their effects on downstream cell signaling pathways. e The coexpression network linking GH and GHR revealed several key genes, such as ATF3, EGR3, SOX2, SOX5, and RUNX2