Fig. 6: The signaling niche of the porcine germ cells.

a Circle plots depict the number of interactions (left) or interaction weights/strength (right) in the cell-cell communication network among major cell types. Colors of dot/edges indicated the particular cell type. b Bubble diagram showing ligand-receptor communications between germline (target) and somatic niche (source) of porcine testes. The color of bubbles indicates the means of the communication probability. c Expression of ligands (red) and receptors (blue) of indicated signaling pathways cast on the UMAP plot from Fig. 1b. Normalized expression is plotted on a low-to-high scale (gray-purple). d Dot plot depicting expression of ligands and receptors of GDNF signaling for major cell types of porcine testes. e Schematic model of selected signaling pathways involved in germling-somatic niche interactions in porcine testes.