Fig. 1: The scRNA-seq and ST profiles of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (n = 12), adjacent normal tissues (n = 6), metastatic lymph nodes (n = 4) and non-metastatic lymph nodes (n = 7).

a Schematic diagram depicting the design of this study. b UMAP plots of the 161,333 high-quality cells from all the 29 samples, with each color coded by either main annotated cell type (left) and corresponding sample type (right). c Violin plot depicting expression levels of the top genes across each main cell type. d Bar plots showing the proportion of each main cell type in different sample types. e The spot clustering of spatial features in the primary tumor sample obtained from one patient with metastatic ESCC. Each color represents one main cell type. The number of spots in the tumor sample is 2343.