Fig. 4

Gene expression pattern and characteristics of the epithelial cell population. Representative GO (a) and KEGG (b) terms of epithelial cell populations in the AM_EC group compared with the AM_EM group are shown. c A heatmap revealed the expression levels of the indicated genes in the AM_EC and AM_EM groups. Yellow indicates a high expression level, and violet indicates a low expression level. d The t-SNE map indicated subclusters of epithelial cells in the AM_EM and AM_EC groups, in which subcluster 1 is circled in red and subcluster 4 is circled in black. The t-SNE map (e) and violin plots (f) show the distribution of VNN1 and CDCA4 in each subcluster. g VNN1 (red), EPCAM (green) and nuclei (blue) were stained, and the white arrows show the colocalization of VNN1 and EPCAM, scale bars = 20 μm. h Histogram indicates the percentage of colocated cells in different groups; ***P < 0.001. GO, Gene Ontology; KEGG, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes