Fig. 6: Characterization of the four PTC subtypes.

a, b Significantly upregulated genes (a) and metabolites (b) in different clusters based on transcriptomics (examined by Deseq2) and metabolomics (examined by Wilcox test, two-sided). Only the top-10 significant items for each subtype are displayed. c–g Boxplot of tumor size (c), number of metastatic lymph nodes (LNM.No) (d), tumor difference scores (TDS) (e), RAS scores (f) and BRAF scores (g) across the four clusters (CS1: n = 26; CS2: n = 15; CS3: n = 34; CS4: n = 17). T test, two-sided, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001. In the boxplots, the central line represents median, the bounds of boxes represent the first and third quartiles, and the upper and lower whiskers extend to the highest or the smallest value within 1.5 interquartile range. h, i The metabolism (h) and immune pathway (i) enrichment results for the four clusters. *P < 0.05, by GSEA (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, one-sided). j Heatmap showing different cell compositions of different clusters. Epi epithelium. Only cell types showing significant differences (Kruskal test, two-sided, P < 0.05) for at least one subtype is displayed. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.