Fig. 7: Spatiotemporal analysis resolves the dominant role of stroma in mediating spatial communication with other cell types.

A Abundance of connections between different cell types in the human endometrium across the LH stages is shown by CellphoneDB. B The interactions between epithelial cells (proEpi, diffEpi, deEpi, seneEpi, Cilium, GLE, and LE) and stromal cells (proStr, undiffStr, diffStr, and deStr). Prioritized ligands are defined by NicheNet, with Pearson correlation indicating the strength of the ligand-target gene relationship. Higher-ranking ligands are predictive of stronger interactions. Dot plots represent the expression of ligands in stromal cells and their corresponding receptors in epithelial cells. The heatmap shows the predicted activity of ligands on their target genes across different stromal cell types, as determined by NicheNet. C Bubble diagram showing highly expressed ligand-receptor pairs mediating interactions between stromal and epithelial cells in LH2 and LH9. The size of the dot represents the log-transformed expression of the indicated ligand and its receptor in different cell types, and the color bar represents their enrichment significance. D Spatial visualization of FGF2, FGF7, and FGFR2 using Stereo-seq (bin10). E Heatmap represents the interactions between ligands in four stromal cells (proStr, undiffStr, diffStr, and deStr) and their receptors in NK cells (pro_NK, CD56_NK, and CD16_NK). Dot plots respectively represent the average expression levels of ligands and receptors in stromal and NK cells. The color bar in the bottom left corner indicates the normalized gene expression levels, the color bar in the bottom middle represents the evaluated ligand activity, and the color bar in the bottom right corner denotes the interaction potential. F Spatial visualization showing ligands in stromal cells (IL-15) and their receptors in NK cells (IL2RB, IL2RG) using Stereo-seq (bin10). ISS verifies the expression of IL-15 (rose red). G A schematic illustration showing the interactions between stromal cells, epithelial cells, and NK cells in human endometrium across the LH stages.