Fig. 7: Ligand–receptor-based interaction between tumor and immune cells.

a Heatmap of the number of significant ligand–receptor interactions between cell types in the scRNA-seq data. b The interaction network between the tumor cell and other cell types. The direction of the arrow indicates the cell type expressing the receptor. The wider the edge or larger the dot is, the greater the number of interactions. c Heatmap of the number of significant interactions mediated by tumor cells as ligand-expressing and receptor-expressing cells. d Dot plots showing the mean interaction strength for selected ligand–receptor pairs between tumor cells and TAM clusters. The left and right plots show that the ligand is expressed in the tumor cells and TAM clusters, respectively. Dot size indicates the P value, colored by the average expression level of interacting molecule 1 in cluster 1 and interacting molecule 2 in cluster 2. e The Kaplan–Meier overall survival curves of TCGA-KIRC patients grouped by the averaged expression of RPS19 and C5AR1 (with the median value as the threshold). HR, hazard ratio. f Dot plots showing the mean interaction strength for selected ligand–receptor pairs between tumor cells and three lymphoid subsets. The left and right plots show that the ligand is expressed in the tumor cells and lymphoid subsets, respectively. Dot size indicates the P value, colored by the average expression level of interacting molecule 1 in cluster 1 and interacting molecule 2 in cluster 2. g Kaplan–Meier overall survival curves of TCGA-KIRC patients grouped by the averaged expression of LTB and LTBR (with the median value as the threshold).