Intrinsic cellular properties and communication capabilities endow metastatic seeds with soil preselection. (A) GSEA shows higher expression of receptor and ligand genes in lung-metastatic lines (n = 2) compared with liver-metastatic lines (n = 2). ES, enrichment score. (B) Functional enrichment analysis of receptor and ligand genes in liver-metastatic and lung-metastatic lines. (C) The thickness of the lines represents the intensity of cellular communication between P1 lung-metastatic lines and P3 liver-metastatic lines with specific cell types in human lung tissue. (D) Lung-metastatic lines exhibited significant overexpression of ligand genes whose corresponding receptors were expressed on the cell surface of capillary ECs. (E) Comparison of ligand genes between CRC lung- and liver-metastatic tissues. P values were calculated using the R package limma. The y-axis represents the signal intensity after log2 RNA signal transformation. M.lung, lung metastases from CRC; M.liver, liver metastases from CRC. *, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01; ****, P < 0.0001.