Fig. 1

Cellular heterogeneity of subcutaneous adipose tissues from nonlesional sites of patients with LoS. A Schematic representation of the experimental procedure. During surgery, liposuction specimens were obtained from nonlesional sites of the thighs of patients with localized scleroderma (LoS) (n = 4) and healthy donors (n = 5). The stromal vascular fraction (SVF) was then isolated from the collected subcutaneous adipose tissue, and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was conducted on each sample individually. B UMAP plot showing the distribution of cellular clusters of all sequenced cells. Each dot denotes a cell and is color-coded according to its respective cellular cluster. C Violin plot showing the normalized expression of canonical markers for each cell type. D Dot plot showing the expression of representative molecular signatures for each cluster. The size of the circles represents the proportion of cells expressing the gene, while the intensity of the color reflects the level of expression. ASC adipose-derived stem cell, cDC conventional dendritic cell, CTRL control, EC endothelial cell, LoS localized scleroderma, MAC macrophage, NK natural killer cell, NKT natural killer T cell, prolif.NKT proliferative nature killer T cell, pDC plasmacytoid dendritic cell