Fig. 5

Pigment cell distribution and differential gene expression in mc2r^KO mutant and WT zebrafish skin. (A) Estimation of the proportion of pigment cells in the skin of mc2r^KO and WT fish via deconvolution analysis of bulk transcriptome data, with single-cell data used as a reference. (B) UpSet plot demonstrating significantly background-dependent differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from skin single-cell transcriptome data⁶³ for xanthophore, melanophore, and iridophore cells. Distinctively expressed genes for iridophores, melanophores, and xanthophores are indicated with blue, black, and yellow bars, respectively. (C) Box plot of the counts of pigment cell types in WT and mc2r^KO skin, based on DEGs unique to each pigment cell type, as identified in the UpSet plot. The black lines represent the median, the whiskers indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the points represent outliers. Melanophores are represented in black, xanthophores in yellow, and iridophores in blue.