Fig. 1: Experimental design.

a Anatomy of the fallopian tube, showing the four major anatomical regions and major cell types. The transcription factors PAX8 and FOXJ1 are used to distinguish secretory and ciliated cells. b Experimental workflow, showing creation of discovery (n = 3) and validation (n = 4) cohorts. Following dissection into anatomical regions, regions of interest (ROIs) containing epithelial cells were selected, segmented by cell type, and probe barcodes were collected from each segment. Barcodes were sequenced on the Illumina NextSeq550, and the final output was transcript abundance for all transcripts in the ~1800-gene CTA panel. c–f Representative scans of the fimbria, infundibulum, ampulla, and isthmus from patient 2, showing staining and ROI selection. Nuclei (blue) = SYTO13; FOXJ1 expressing ciliated cells (green) = CY3, PAX8 expressing secretory cells (red) = AF594; Scale bar = 5 mm. g A Sankey diagram showing distribution of segments in the discovery and validation datasets across three categories: patient of origin, anatomical region (Amp = Ampulla (red), Fim = Fimbria (green), Inf = Infundibulum (blue), Isth = Isthmus (purple)), and cell type (ciliated or secretory). A total of 77 segments (out of 110 originally collected) remain following quality control. h Boxplot showing expression of FOXJ1 and PAX8 in ciliated and secretory segments for discovery (n = 77 segments) and validation (n = 74 segments) datasets. Ciliated = green, Secretory = red; Lower and upper hinges of boxplot correspond to first (Q1) and third quartiles (Q3); central line corresponds to median. Whiskers of boxplot range from Q3 + 1.5*IQR to Q1-1.5*IQR. P-values calculated using two-sided t-test. Created in BioRender. Sipes, J. (2025) https://BioRender.com/a22y908.