Fig. 6: Cell–cell communication between keratinocytes and immune cells is predicted to occur through innate and adaptive cell-specific programs.
From: Single-cell and spatially resolved interactomics of tooth-associated keratinocytes in periodontitis
a CellChat was used to understand cell signaling pathways in health and disease considering tooth-associated keratinocytes (basal versus suprabasal; SB and junctional versus sulcular keratinocytes; JK/SKs). Circle plots highlight the significant receptor-ligand interactions between any cell populations, including same-cell type signaling interactions (i.e., JK-JK, SK-SK, etc.). The proportion of interactions increased across more detailed immune cell type annotations (Tier 4 annotations; see Supplementary Fig. 6). b Relative information flow in health and disease showed a preference for cell adhesion (NECTIN, COLLAGEN, JAM, LAMININ) and other pathways such as APP, CXCL, and MIF pathways. In disease, more preference for cell signaling pathways is preferred, such as TGFB, TIGIT, CCL, CD45, and EGF. Value of 0 red signifies the pathway is not enriched in periodontitis; value of 100 red signifies highly enriched. Innate (c) and adaptive (d) immune cell communication was measured gene-by-gene using a chord diagram for visualizing cell-cell communication. e, f Dot plots showed upregulated signaling pathways in periodontitis at the level of predicted receptor–ligand interactions (y-axis) based on tooth-associated keratinocytes (x-axis). Innate cells appeared to potentially interact with junctional keratinocytes (JK) via CD99-CD99, CD99-PILRA, GAS6-AXL, and MIF-(CD74 + CXCR4/CD44). Adaptive cells appeared to potentially interact via similar pathways. Unique to adaptive cells-JK signaling include XCL2-XCR1; unique to innate cells, AREG-EGFR. Abbreviations: Cycle; KCs Cycling Keratinocytes, Spin Spinous Layer, Granular Granular Layer, Inter Intermediate Layer, Super Superficial; Merk Merkel Cells, Mela Melanocytes, LC Langerhans Cells, MigDC Migratory Dendritic Cells, Mast Mast Cells, also see Fig. 1 legend. Illustration from (a) created with BioRender.com. For this figure, n = 34-sample, 46835-cell for scRNAseq.
