Figure 2. Single-cell RNA-seq reveals BIRC5⁺ immune cells to be specifically elicited by Staphylococcus aureus toxins during infection.

(A) Experimental design for single-cell RNA-seq of CD45⁺ from Cx3cr1^{CreERT2-EYFP/+} R26^tdTomato/+ mice infected intravascularly with 5x10⁶ CFU of S. aureus and sorted 1 week post-infection. Gating was on singlets, live cells, CD45⁺, tdTomato⁺. (B) UMAP clustering of CX3CR1-derived CD45⁺ cells with phenotypic classification(C) UMAP clustering of isolated cells differentiating between cells from WT versus ΔTOX infected mice. (D) Percentage of total cells defined as each immune subset from either WT or ΔTOX infected mice. (E) Expression of Birc5 and other lineage defining markers across both datasets. (F) Heatmap showing differential gene expression between identified BIRC5⁺ immune clusters in mice infected with either WT or ΔTOX S. aureus.