Fig. 1

Heatmap of identified 20 lncRNAs expression profiles. a Heatmap of the average expression values across four time points for the 20 lncRNAs. b Heatmap of actual expression values at individual time points for the 20 lncRNAs. Type: response status, corresponding to the responder group and the non-responder group that were colored by red and green, respectively. From plot A, it is observed that the responders and non-responders may be clustered into several separate communities by the hierarchical clustering method. If the number of clusters was set at 2, eleven patients were misclassified, resulting in an unsatisfactory performance. In plot B, the similar pattern has been observed. Of note, the expression values have been normalized to have a mean of 0 and a variance of 1, for a clearer representation of these 20 lncRNAs. The color bars on the right side indicate the ranges of gene expression values, with red for high expression values and blue for low expression values