Fig. 3

scRNA-seq revealed a decreased number and impaired function of NK cells in IgAN. A UMAP illustration of refined NK cell clusters from CTRL and IgAN annotated by their markers genes: NK-0 (Red circles), NK-1 (Green circles), NK-2 (Blue circles). B Representative feature plots of the marker genes for NK cell subset annotation. C Heatmap of the marker genes contributed from each NK cell subsets. D Individual UMAP illustration of NK cells by cells of origin. E Statistical analysis of each NK cell subset between CTRL and IgAN. CTRL n = 6; IgAN n = 10; Mean ± SEM; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01. F Violin plots of the DEGs in each NK cell subset between CTRL (Red violin) and IgAN (Blue violin). G Enrichment plots from gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) of GO categories in NK cells between CTRL and IgAN. H Flow cytometry validation of the CD56 + CD3 ± NK cells in CTRL and IgAN. I Statistical analysis of the cell percentage of CD56 + CD3-, CD56 + CD3 + , and total CD56 + cells between CTRL (Red) and IgAN (Blue). CTRL n = 4; IgAN n = 4; Mean ± SEM; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. J Heatmap of the Spearman correlation of IgAN clinical parameters with the cell numbers of each NK subset. Red and blue boxes indicate positive and negative correlations, respectively. *p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001. L Heatmap of the Spearman correlation of IgAN clinical parameters with the expression levels of marker genes in each NK subset. Red and blue boxes indicate positive and negative correlations, respectively. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001