Components of liver microenvironment is complex, which makes it difficult to clarify pathogenesis of chronic liver diseases (CLD). Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have greatly revealed the role of host genetic background in CLD pathogenesis and prognosis, while single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enables interrogation of the cellular diversity and function of liver tissue at unprecedented resolution. Here, we made integrative analysis on the GWAS and scRNA-seq data of CLD to uncover CLD-related cell types and provide clues for understanding on the pathogenesis.
We downloaded three GWAS summary data and three scRNA-seq data on CLD. After defining the cell types for each scRNA-seq data, we used
After processing the scRNA-seq data, we obtain about 19,002–32,200 cells and identified 10–17 cell types. For the HCC analysis, we identified the association between B cell and HCC in two datasets.
In this integrative analysis, we identified B cell and NK cell as HCC-related cell type. More attention and verification should be paid to them in future research.