Fig 2: Inflamed tissues of IBD patients show increased neuroglial signature and innervation. (A) Heatmaps showing normalized log2 fkpm counts from the publicly available PROTECT ulcerative colitis (UC) dataset, showing the expression levels of the indicated neuroglial identifiers and their correlation with the inflammation marker S100A8 (red highlight). The expression of the epithelial marker VIL1 (blue highlight) was used as a reference for epithelial erosion. (B) Volcano plots for genes shown in A, representing significant fold changes in UC versus controls combined for both sexes. (C) Heatmaps showing normalized log2 fkpm counts of the neuroglial identifiers and their expression correlation with the inflammation marker S100A8 (red highlight) from the publicly available dataset of UC patients either in remission or with active disease and controls. The expression of the epithelial marker VIL1 (blue highlight) was used as a reference for epithelial erosion. (D,E) Sections of the uninflamed and inflamed intestine of (D) CD patients and (E) UC patients, immunostained with TUBB3 (red) and Hoechst 33,342 (blue). Scale bars = 100 µm. (F) Volcano plots for neuroglial identifiers representing significant fold changes in active UC versus controls from the independent patient cohort. In B and F, each dot represents one gene, the red and blue solid rectangles represent zones of significance of up- and downregulated genes, and the numbers represent the percentage of total identifiers found in either of these significance zones.