Fig 1.
Histology of representative non-splinted (top) and splinted (bottom) rat TMJ condyles, scale bar = 500μm (A). Micro-computed tomography 3D constructions and 2D sections of control and splinted condyles (B).
Fig 2.
Cell count in each cluster per group(A), Cell Cluster UMAP (B), Matrix cell biomarker dot plot (C), Dot Plot of the top 10 biomarkers in each cluster (D).
Fig 3.
Trajectory plot gene expression and cluster identity (A) and pseudotime plot(B).
RNAscope performed on condyle cartilage from healthy rats: stained for collagen 2 (COL2A1) in red and lubricin (PRG4) in blue (C, top), stained for fibrillin 1 (FBN1) in red and pleiotrophin (PTN) in blue (C, middle), and the percent area positive for each stain per layer (superficial, proliferative, and mature/hypertrophic) (n = 1) (C, bottom). Gene set enrichment results of each cluster, showing biological processes (green), molecular functions (blue), and cellular components (purple) (D).
Table 1.
Top fibroblast DEGs and their functions based on expression state.
Table 2.
Top chondrocyte DEGs and their functions based on expression state.
Table 3.
Top PreC cell DEGs and their functions based on expression state.
Table 4.
Top chondrocyte progenitor cell DEGs and their functions based on expression state.
Fig 4.
Pathway analysis of top most upregulated and downregulated pathways of each cell type (splinted vs control).
Positive (red) z-score indicates upregulation in the splinted group relative to the control group (A). Differentially expressed fibrocartilage matrix genes (B) and differentially expressed genes from OATargets database (C).
Fig 5.
Differentially expressed number of cell-cell interactions (ligand-receptor pairs) and interaction strength (communication probability), where red is overexpression in OA and blue is underexpression in OA(A).
Top communication signaling pathways among healthy control (red) and splinted OA (blue) cells (B). Incoming and outgoing signaling patterns of top pathways across cell types. Green is high communication strength (probability) and white is low communication strength. The top bars indicate the total signaling from each cell, while the bars on the right indicate the total signaling of each pathway. Red boxes are highlighting the pathways with the most altered signaling strength.