Fig. 6: Single-cell profiling of the lung tissues from an MDA5⁺ DM patient.

a Diagram depicting the lung sample sources. Adobe Illustrator 2020 was used to create the image. b t-SNE plot showing of the overview of 16 cell clusters in the integrated single-cell transcriptomes of 13,695 lung cells from one MDA5⁺ DM-Act patient (4337 cells) and two healthy donors (9358 cells) from a public source. Clusters are named as indicated cell subsets according to the specific gene expression patterns (Supplementary Table 3) and are color-coded. c Comparison of cell type fractions in individual samples. CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cell subsets are shown on the right. d Representative mIHC images showing the staining for CD8 (green, middle and bottom), Ki67 (red, middle), MX1 (red, bottom), and DAPI (blue, middle and bottom) in the lung tissues of a Ctrl (n = 1; normal part of lung adenocarcinoma) and MDA5⁺ DM (n = 2; low immune cell infiltration and high immune cell infiltration, respectively) patients. The white arrows indicate Ki67⁺CD8⁺ T cells (middle) and MX1⁺CD8⁺ T (bottom) cells, and the yellow arrows indicate Ki67⁻CD8⁺ T cells (middle) and MX1⁻CD8⁺ T cells (bottom). Scale bar: 50 μm. e Heatmap showing GO enrichment pathways for individual donors according to donor-specific expressed genes (avglog2FC > 0.5). f CellChat analysis showing type I IFN signaling intercellular communication between cell subtypes. g Bubble plots showing ligand–receptor interactions between fibroblasts and the indicated cell types, with a significant difference between the MDA5⁺ DM and HD groups. mIHC, multiplex immunohistochemistry; DAPI, 4’, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; Ctrl, control; GO, gene ontology; avglog2FC: log of average expression fold change.