CellCall:整合配体-受体对和转录因子活性以进行细胞间通讯。
CellCall: integrating paired ligand-receptor and transcription factor activities for cell-cell communication.
机构信息
Department of Bioinformatics, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China.
State Key Laboratory of Organ Failure Research, Department of Developmental Biology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China.
出版信息
Nucleic Acids Res. 2021 Sep 7;49(15):8520-8534. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkab638.
With the dramatic development of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies, the systematic decoding of cell-cell communication has received great research interest. To date, several in-silico methods have been developed, but most of them lack the ability to predict the communication pathways connecting the insides and outsides of cells. Here, we developed CellCall, a toolkit to infer inter- and intracellular communication pathways by integrating paired ligand-receptor and transcription factor (TF) activity. Moreover, CellCall uses an embedded pathway activity analysis method to identify the significantly activated pathways involved in intercellular crosstalk between certain cell types. Additionally, CellCall offers a rich suite of visualization options (Circos plot, Sankey plot, bubble plot, ridge plot, etc.) to present the analysis results. Case studies on scRNA-seq datasets of human testicular cells and the tumor immune microenvironment demonstrated the reliable and unique functionality of CellCall in intercellular communication analysis and internal TF activity exploration, which were further validated experimentally. Comparative analysis of CellCall and other tools indicated that CellCall was more accurate and offered more functions. In summary, CellCall provides a sophisticated and practical tool allowing researchers to decipher intercellular communication and related internal regulatory signals based on scRNA-seq data. CellCall is freely available at https://github.com/ShellyCoder/cellcall.
随着单细胞 RNA 测序 (scRNA-seq) 技术的飞速发展,细胞间通讯的系统解码引起了极大的研究兴趣。迄今为止,已经开发了几种计算方法,但大多数方法缺乏预测连接细胞内外通讯途径的能力。在这里,我们开发了 CellCall,这是一个通过整合配体-受体对和转录因子 (TF) 活性来推断细胞内和细胞间通讯途径的工具包。此外,CellCall 使用嵌入式途径活性分析方法来识别与特定细胞类型之间细胞间串扰相关的显著激活途径。此外,CellCall 提供了丰富的可视化选项(Circos 图、Sankey 图、气泡图、脊线图等)来呈现分析结果。对人类睾丸细胞 scRNA-seq 数据集和肿瘤免疫微环境的案例研究表明,CellCall 在细胞间通讯分析和内部 TF 活性探索方面具有可靠和独特的功能,这些功能进一步通过实验得到了验证。CellCall 与其他工具的比较分析表明,CellCall 更准确,提供了更多的功能。总之,CellCall 提供了一个复杂而实用的工具,允许研究人员根据 scRNA-seq 数据破译细胞间通讯和相关的内部调节信号。CellCall 可在 https://github.com/ShellyCoder/cellcall 上免费获取。