Fig. 4

Cell‒cell interaction analysis revealed a significant Galectin-9 signaling pathway of macrophages in the immune micromilieu of lupus nephritis (LN). (A) Dot plot showing the signaling patterns of macrophages and other immune cells. The dot size is proportional to the contribution score computed in pattern recognition analysis. A higher contribution score implies that the signaling pathway is more enriched in the corresponding cell group. Enriched LGALS9 signaling was observed to be the most significant beside the MHC-I-CD8 and MHC-II-CD4 interactions. (B) The immunofluorescence study confirmed the predicted upregulation of LGALS9 in CD68 + macrophages in LN. The LN immunofluorescence images in this figure are from a 37-year-old woman with 3-year duration of LN disease, which was stage II (LN patient 3 in Supplementary Table 1)