Fig. 2
TRAF6 mediates acute allograft rejection through Th1/Th17 response. (A) Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) dimensionality reduction plot following Harmony batch-effect correction, displaying 11 distinct cell clusters colored by cell type: B_cells, Macrophage, T_cells, Cytotoxic_CD8_T, plasma, Monocyte, Neutrophil, Proliferating_T, NK_cells, monoDCs (monocyte-derived dendritic cells), and ILCs (innate lymphoid cells). (B) Stacked bar plot depicting relative proportions of the 11 cell types across four experimental groups: graft heart, allograft heart, isograft spleen, and allograft spleen. Colors correspond to cell types as in A; bars represent tissue- and treatment-specific immune composition. (C) Dot plot showing expression levels of canonical marker genes across cell types. Each dot represents a cell type, with color intensity indicating normalized gene expression (log scale) and dot size reflecting the percentage of cells expressing the gene. Key markers include Cd79a (B cells), CD68 (macrophages), Cd3d (T cells), Nkg7 (NK cells), Ly6c2 (monocytes), and Rora (ILCs). (D) Scatter plot illustrating correlations between Traf6 expression and Cd4 /Cd8a levels in T_cells. Each point represents an individual T cell; red and blue lines indicate linear regression fits for CD4 and CD8A, respectively. Pearson correlation coefficients (R) and significance values (p) are annotated. (E) Violin plots comparing expression distributions of Traf6, Ifng (interferon-γ), and Tbx21 (T-bet) in graft vs. allograft hearts (left) and isograft vs. allograft spleens (right). Statistical significance between groups was determined by Wilcoxon rank-sum test (p < 0.05, FDR-corrected). (F,G) FCM assay shows CT6i exhibited markedly reduced CD4 + Tbet + subsets. (H,I) FCM assay shows CT6i exhibited markedly reduced CD4 + IFN-γ + subsets. (J,K) CT6i exhibited markedly reduced CD4 + RORγt + subsets. (L,M) CT6i exhibited markedly reduced CD4 + IL17A + subsets. (N,O) CT6i exhibited markedly reduced CD4 + Foxp3 + subsets.
