Co-expression network construction

An lncRNA-mRNA co-expression network was constructed to determine their association, and the algorithm was as follows: i) The data were preprocessed for median gene expression values of all transcripts from the same coding gene, without special treatment for lncRNAs; ii) data for aberrantly expressed lncRNAs and mRNAs were removed following screening; iii) Pearson's correlation coefficient (PCC) was calculated and the R value was used to calculate the PCC between lncRNAs and mRNAs; and iv) the data were screened and data for which the PCC was >0.99 were selected. The gene co-expression network was constructed using Cytoscape software version 3.1.1 (U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Washington, DC, USA).

In the network, yellow nodes represented the lncRNAs and green nodes represented the mRNAs. Circular nodes represented lncRNAs and diamond nodes represented the mRNAs. Continuous lines indicated a positive association and dashed lines indicated a negative association.