Fig. 5

Role of macrophages in DR, inflammatory regulatory networks and adhesion mechanisms of inflammatory cells. A The PPI network shows the highly expressed proteins of macrophages (ribosomes removed). The size and color represent the combined score of each protein. Significant proteins are marked with red circles. B Bar plot showing the pathways from KEGG analysis. The color and length indicate the significance of pathway enrichment. C Bubble plot showing the important ligand–receptor pairs from CellChat analysis. The horizontal axis shows the communication relationship between cells. The longitudinal axis shows ligand–receptor pairs. The color indicates the communication probability, and the point size indicates the calculated p value. D Heatmap showing the average expression of differentially expressed adhesion molecules in microglia and macrophages. High expression is in red, and low expression is in blue. E Interactions between adhesion molecules and their receptors expressed by inflammatory cells and endothelial cells (ECs). Circles represent different types of adhesion molecules and their corresponding receptors. The colors represent the cell types: Egr2⁺ M1 microglia (pink), macrophages (blue), Egr2.⁻ M1 microglia (yellow), and ECs (green)