Identification of signaling channels between mesenchymal subsets and MDS-propagating cells. (A) Sorting strategy of CD34⁺CD38⁻ cells. (B) Transcriptome-wide PCA demonstrating the separation between CD34⁺CD38⁻ cells in patients undergoing hip replacement surgery and patients with MDS. (C) Heatmap of DEGs (more than twofold change; FDR < 0.05) between CD34⁺CD38⁻ of patients with MDS and those undergoing hip replacement surgery. (D) Functional gene categories enriched in CD34⁺CD38⁻ from patients with MDS compared with patients undergoing hip replacement surgery, according to GSEA. (E) Bar plot of ligands with highest frequency of inferred ligand-receptor interactions in the different mesenchymal subsets in which the ligand was differentially expressed in mesenchymal cells of patients with MDS compared with that in cells of the control (more than twofold expression change, with FDR < 0.05), and the receptor was expressed in CD34⁺CD38⁻ hematopoietic cells. (F-H) Ligand-receptor interactions in the different mesenchymal subsets in which the ligand is differentially expressed in the indicated mesenchymal subset (red: upregulated; blue: downregulated), and the receptor is expressed (RPKM > 1) in CD34⁺CD38⁻ cells.