Fig. 5: Supporting cell-like cells and their cluster-defining markers.
From: Revealing heterogeneity and damage response in the adult human utricle
a Heatmap displaying the Euclidean distances between hair cell, supporting cell, and SC-like cell clusters in the subspace of PC1:50. The colour gradient represents the distance between clusters, with darker colours indicating a closer relationship. b SC-like cell cluster-enriched genes are depicted in a volcano plot. Using Padj < 0.05, log2 FC > |1|, 21 differentially expressed genes were identified between SC-like cells and the other five supporting cell clusters using a two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Arrowheads indicate validated genes. See Supplementary Data 2d for the list of differentially expressed genes. c UMAP plots show significantly SC-like cell-enriched genes with darker colours indicating higher expression levels. d In situ hybridization on a human utricle cross-section showing the expression of ANKRD1 (magenta) and CRYAB (green), counterstained with DAPI (blue), n ≥ 3. The expression is mainly present in the sensory epithelium near areas of missing cells marked with asterisks and dashed lines in the lower inset (63x magnification of the area outlined in white). High-magnification insets highlight the colocalization of ANKRD1 and CRYAB within a representative nucleus (blue), outlined with a white circle near a region of absent cells (marked by an asterisk). The upper inset displays UMAP plots of the two target genes, showing their in silico transcript counts within the SC-like cell cluster (37 cells in total) and a high-magnification image illustrating their co-expression. Scale bars = 100 μm, 25 μm and 2 μm in the lower insets, and 10 μm in the upper inset.
