Fig. 2.

Dying osteocytic cells highly express RANKL. a,b Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) plots of the scRNA–seq (GSE154719)²⁹ on tdTomato⁺ cells derived from bone tissues of Dmp1-Cre;Sp7^+/+;tdTomato⁺ mice (n = 21 671 cells) (a) and Dmp1-Cre;Sp7^flox/flox;tdTomato⁺ mice (n = 5 098 cells) (b). The dot plots in the right panels show the expression of selected osteocyte marker genes in the identified subclusters. c UMAP plot of the integrated data (n = 26 769 cells) and feature plots showing the expression of osteocyte marker genes at the single-cell level. The arrowheads indicate Osteocytic Cell Cluster 9. d,e Functional enrichment analysis (d) and regulatory target gene set analysis (e) comparing normal osteocytes and dying osteocytic cells. f Violin plots showing the expression of selected genes in dying and normal osteocytic cells