MERINGUE systematically and quantitatively evaluates for putative cell–cell communication for neuronal subtypes in the preoptic region using MERFISH data. (A) Distribution of −log10(P-values) for the spatial cross-correlation between Cyp19a1 expression in neuronal subtypes and Esr1 expression in adjacent cells across animals. Boxes in the box plot denote the median values and inner quartile ranges (IQR) and whiskers denote 1.5 × IQR with additional outliers represented as points. Red dotted line is the alpha = 0.05 significance threshold. Generally, inhibitory neuron subtype I-2 shows significant spatial cross-correlation between Cyp19a1 expression and Esr1 expression in adjacent cells in a manner that is consistent across animals. (B) Cyp19a1 expression in I-2 neurons in one tissue slice in one animal with red indicating high expression and blue indicating low expression. Representative slice and animal shown. Select areas are highlighted in the zoom-in. (C) Esr1 expression in cells neighboring I-2 neurons in one tissue layer in one animal, with red indicating high expression and blue indicating low expression. Representative slice and animal shown. The same select areas as B are highlighted in the zoom-in.
