Fig 1: Both epithelial and mesenchymal characteristics presented by Krt14+Ctsk+ cells.a Volcano plots showing DEGs of Krt14+ Op-1 versus Krt14+ HBC (cutoff: |Log2FC| > 0.58, FDR < 0.1); upregulated genes (red); downregulated genes (blue). b GSEA analysis presenting enriched transcriptional programs in Krt14+ Op-1 versus those in Krt14+ HBC; color coded by each program. c Expression of osteogenic, epithelial and mesenchymal markers visualized on UMAP projection of Op-1 and HBC; color coded by the expression level of each gene. d Violin plots generated from c; showing log-normalized expression values of the indicated genes. e Distribution of Krt14+ cells (blue) and Ctsk+ cells (red) visualized on the UMAP projection of OLCs and HBCs; color coded by the expression level of each gene. The area circled by the dotted line is magnified on the right. f Representative confocal images of nose sections from wild-type mice on Ctrl, days 6, and 14 post-surgery groups. Images in the white dotted boxes were shown in the right part of each panel. Merged and single-channel images of Krt14 (green), Ctsk (red), and Vim (blue) staining were shown. n = 3 mice per condition from 3 independent experiments. Scale bar, 50 µm. The yellow dotted lines indicate the boundaries of anatomical landmarks. E, epithelium; CT, connective tissue. g Flow cytometry analysis of cells stained by Krt14 and Ctsk. n = 40 from the Ctrl group; n = 80 for groups of days 6 and 14 post-MSFL. The proportion of each cell type is labeled aside. One independent experiment was carried out. h Dot-line plot generated from f; Krt14+Ctsk+ cell (red); Krt14–Ctsk+ cell (blue). i Dot-line plots showing the variation of Krt14+Ctsk+ cell (red) and Krt14–Ctsk+ cell (blue) proportion at all time points generated from scRNA-seq analysis; the proportion of each cell type in OLCs (left) and in all cells (right) is shown.