Fig. 8: Identification of ligand-receptor pairs between BECs and astrocyte endfeet that are relevant to human disease.
From: Molecular profiling of brain endothelial cell to astrocyte endfoot communication in mouse and human
a Schematic of analysis. Three external human studies71,72,73 and data from healthy human vascular proteome in this study (Fig. 7) were searched for the ligand-receptor pairs identified in mice (Fig. 4). b Bar charts indicating size of reference datasets. For snRNA-seq studies, BEC (pink) and astrocyte (green) clusters were considered; for proteomic studies, the entire vascular proteome (purple) was considered (see Supplementary Data 7). Bottom bars show the number of unique ligands in mouse BEC RNA-seq (pink) and number of unique receptors in mouse endfoot proteome (blue) identified in this study. c Number of mouse BEC-endfoot ligand-receptor pairs identified across all, some or none of the human datasets. Pairs found in multiple datasets indicated by connected dots. Number of ligand-receptor pairs indicated above bars (altered by LPS, teal; not altered, gray; number of pairs altered by LPS/number of pairs not altered). d Schematic to identify ligand-receptor pairs differentially expressed in human disease. Ligand-receptor pairs were considered differentially expressed in disease if either the ligand or receptor was differentially expressed in the reference dataset and its corresponding partner was identified. Transcripts in the reference datasets with a false discovery rate (FDR) less than 0.1 (disease vs. control) for snRNA-seq studies and proteins with a Bonferroni-adjusted p < 0.1 for proteomic studies were considered significant. e Bar charts indicating total number of differentially expressed genes in each of the referenced datasets. For snRNA-seq studies, endothelial cell (pink) and astrocyte (green) clusters were considered; for proteomic studies, the entire vascular proteome (purple) was considered. Number of unique ligands from mouse BEC RNA-seq (pink) and number of unique receptors from mouse endfoot proteome (blue) that contribute to differentially expressed ligand-receptor pairs are highlighted. f Number of differentially expressed ligand-receptor pairs identified across all, some or none or the referenced human datasets. Pairs differentially expressed in multiple datasets are indicated by connected dots. Number of ligand-receptor pairs indicated above bars (altered by LPS, teal; not altered, gray; number of pairs altered by LPS/number of pairs not altered). MS multiple sclerosis, AD Alzheimer’s disease. Source data are provided in Supplementary Data 7.
