Fig. 1

Overview of the study cohort and samples. From 52 human individuals of a mixed cohort (healthy and lung diseases), the eleven major components of blood were purified. For each purified blood component and a whole blood sample of the same donor, the sRNA population was isolated and subjected to sRNA sequencing for expression analysis. For the individual purified blood fractions of each donor, we additionally obtained the cell counts, elution volume and sRNA concentration to determine the sRNA content of each sample. Furthermore, the relative blood counts of 18 subpopulations of monocytes, NK cells, CD4+ T cells, and CD8+ T cells were determined. Images of the blood cell types were modified from Häggström²².