Fig. 3

 C-kit increases in N-CDH+OA synovium

(A) The top 20 upregulated (or downregulated) differential genes in the cluster based on their expression level of N- cadherin in 70 OA synovial samples. (B) Venn diagrams and heatmaps based on the intersection between the top 40 differential genes and EMT-related receptors involved in EMT. (C) The PPI network of N-cadherin- and C-kit- (A-B, red arrowhead) related DEGs between the N-CDH⁻ or N-CDH⁺ subclusters. Orange and blue circles represent genes with high and low expression in the N-CDH⁺ subcluster, respectively. (D) C-kit expression in N-CDH⁻ or N-CDH⁺ OA synovium derived from different patients (n = 3). (E) The expression and location of C-kit (red) and N-cadherin (green) in two subpopulations of OA synovium by immunofluorescence (bar = 100 μm). N-CDH: N-cadherin; RTK: receptor tyrosine kinase; SMO: smoothed