Figure 6. Identification of a proliferative “stem-like” cell cluster that retains CX3CR1 expression.

(A) Violin plot and heatmap showing higher expression of CX3CR1 in cluster 7. (B) Violin plot and heatmap showing higher expression of cell cycle genes in cluster 7. (C) Representative immunofluorescence images of aortic root staining with Ki-67 (purple), EYFP (yellow), and TdTomato (red) from the Cx3cr1^{CreERT2-IRES-YFP/+}Rosa26^{fl-tdTomato/+} atherosclerotic mice in the progression group. Scale bars: 50 μm. (D) 138 genes that were expressed more than one read in 90% of cells in cluster 7 were compared with macrophages, monocytes, myeloid progenitors, stem cells, and DCs extracted from the ImmGen database. Cells from cluster 7 were randomly grouped into 4 subgroups (shown in black), and the median expression of each gene is shown. Heatmap analysis illustrates the clustering of similar cell types and genes based on normalized gene expression profiles.