Fig. 6: Keratoconus-related changes in cell–cell communications.

a Expression profiles for YAP signaling pathway components in CSC and CEC subclusters. b Expression changes of YAP1 in CSC and CEC subclusters of keratoconus samples. **P < 0.01, ****P < 0.0001 (two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test). c Chord diagram of cellular interactions between ImCs/CECs and CSCs from Ctrl and KC samples, separately. The number of interaction pairs and cell types are annotated. d Dot plot of erased ligand-receptor interactions associated with CSCs in KC samples compared to that in Ctrl samples. CSCs express receptors and receive ligand signals from CECs/ImCs. The row represents a ligand-receptor pair and the column defines a cell-cell interaction. The samples of Ctrl or KC are annotated in the brackets. P values and means was calculated by CellphoneDB pipeline. The dot size reflects the P values for cell type-specificity, and the dot color denotes the mean of the average ligand-receptor expression in the corresponding interacting cell types. The pairs mentioned in the text are in dashed boxes. e Bar graph of the expression of IL1RN in ImCs and IL1R1 in CSCs. f NicheNet interaction heatmap between ImCs/CECs and CSCs in KC samples. Left, heatmap of average log₂FC of the top predicted ligands expression between KC and Ctrl samples for CECs/ImCs. Bottom, heatmap of average log₂FC of ligand-matched targets expression between KC and Ctrl samples for CSCs. Middle, heatmap of predicted ligand-target regulatory potential.