Fig. 4: Deficiency of FGF21 exacerbated inflammation and activated an excessive innate immune response in mouse liver transplantation.

a Wild-type and Fgf21 KO donor livers in the mouse orthotopic liver transplantation model were harvested, stored for 30 min at 4 °C, and transplanted into wild-type recipient mice. b Serum ALT and AST levels for each group after transplantation (n = 4, per group). c The 15-HETE level in the livers of each group 6 h after reperfusion (n = 4, per group). d The FGF21 level in the serum of each group 6 h after reperfusion (n = 4, per group). e Representative TUNEL staining of liver sections from each group (n = 4, per group). f Heatmap showing the differential expression of 41 immune markers in 34 cell clusters. g Two-dimensional t-SNE illustration of the CyTOF data of livers isolated from WT >> WT and KO >> WT (n = 4/group), the merged t-SNE graph was used for contrast. h–j The frequencies of the identified clusters in granulocytes, Mono/Mac cells and NK cells and the comparisons between the groups (n = 4, per group), boxplot shows the median (center line), 25th, and 75th percentile (lower and upper boundary), and the whiskers are essentially range bars that extend to max and min values. k Multiplex immunohistochemistry staining of NK1.1 (green), CD62L (red) and DAPI (blue) in Fgf21 KO-transplanted livers, three independent biological mice samples. Scale bar, 50 μm. OLT orthotopic liver transplantation, WT wild-type, KO knockout, ALT, alanine aminotransferase, AST aspartate aminotransferase, TUNEL Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling, Mono/Mac monocyte/macrophage, NK natural killer. Two-tailed t-test. Statistic data are presented as the mean ± SD, error bars represent the means of at least three independent experiments. p values are shown on the graphs, p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Figure 4a created with BioRender. com released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en).