Fig. 5: Cellular and molecular features underlying diffuse alveolar damage in the lungs of patients with COVID-19.
From: A single-cell transcriptomic landscape of the lungs of patients with COVID-19
a, Proportions of AT1 cells in the lungs of the Control (n = 4 donors) and COVID-19 (n = 5 donors) groups (left). Immunofluorescence analysis of PDPN in the lungs of the Control and COVID-19 groups (middle). Alveolar diagrams on the right showing the shedding of lung alveolar epithelial cells in patients with COVID-19. b, Proportions of cells expressing AT1- or AT2-representative markers (CLIC5, CAV1 and CAV2; and SFTPC, PGC, WIF1 and SFTA3, respectively) in the indicated samples. c, Death scores of AT1 and AT2 cells in Control (AT1, n = 5,918 cells; and AT2, n = 6,576 cells) and COVID-19 (AT1, n = 2,536 cells; and AT2, n = 8,612 cells) lungs. a,c, The boxes in the box-and-whisker plots show the median (centre line) and the quartile range (25-75%), and the whiskers extend from the quartiles to the minimum and maximum values. P values, determined using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, are indicated. d, Gene-set scores of cell-death and epithelial cell markers in AT1 and AT2 cells in the lungs of the Control (n = 12,494 cells) and COVID-19 (n = 11,148 cells) groups. Each dot represents one cell. e, GO term and pathway enrichment analysis of COVID-19 DEGs in AT1 (left) and AT2 (right) cells. f, Expression levels of regeneration-related genes in the AT2 cells of COVID-19 and Control lungs. RL, right lower lobe; RM, right middle lobe; and LL, left lower lobe. g, Heatmap showing the expression levels of surfactant- and mucoprotein-related genes in Control and COVID-19 samples (left). Alveolar diagrams on the right show the accumulation of mucus in lung alveoli of patients with COVID-19. Cell-type abbreviations as per Fig. 2a. h, Network plot showing core transcription factors (TFs) in the regulation of surfactant-related COVID-19 DEGs in lung epithelial cells. The diamonds indicate the surfactant-related genes and the nodes denote transcription factors. nMotif denotes the number of motifs for each gene by the indicated transcription factor. i, Immunofluorescence analysis of MUC5B in the bronchiole and alveolar ducts of Control and COVID-19 lungs. a,i, Control, n = 13 lungs; and COVID-19, n = 5 lungs, with samples from three lung lobes each. Scale bars, 20 μm (main images) and 5 μm (magnified images). Quantitative data are shown as the mean ± s.e.m. Two-tailed t-test P values are indicated.
