Fig. 5: Analysis of mean gene expression and DMRs across SAT cell types reveals the potential involvement of DNA methylation pathway genes in regulating cell-type-level hypermethylation and hypomethylation in SAT.

a, A schematic representation of basic mechanisms and key players in DNA methylation and demethylation. b, Dot plot of TET1 and DNMT3A showing their expression profiles across the SAT cell types. The size of the dot represents the percentage of cells in which a gene is expressed within a cell type, and the color represents the average expression of each gene across all cells within a cell type (blue indicates higher expression). c, Proportions of assigned hypomethylated (left) and hypermethylated states (right) across DMRs. d, UMAP visualization of the average global mCG ratio in a cell. The dashed line highlights those annotated as myeloid cells. e, Bar plot reflecting the distribution of normalized mCG fractions across genes that co-clustered with TET1 in f for ASPCs and adipocytes. Asterisk (*) indicates statistical significance from a paired one-tailed Wilcoxon rank-sum test, comparing the median cluster expression across n = 5 samples, showing higher expression in ASPCs than in adipocytes (unadjusted P = 0.031). The center of the bar represents the median, and the error bars represent the highest and lowest expression across n = 5 samples. f, Longitudinal expression of TET1 is plotted across the 14-day SAT preadipocyte differentiation. The shaded ribbon behind the trajectory of TET1 reflects the mean and standard deviation of the genes that clustered into similar trajectory patterns as TET1 using DPGP.