Extracellular vesicle-derived miRNA-mediated cell–cell communication inference for single-cell transcriptomic data with miRTalk
Xin Shao, Lingqi Yu, Chengyu Li, Jingyang Qian, Xinyu Yang, Haihong Yang, Jie Liao, Xueru Fan, Xiao Xu, Xiaohui Fan
Abstract
MicroRNAs are released from cells in extracellular vesicles (EVs), representing an essential mode of cell-cell communication (CCC) via a regulatory effect on gene expression. Single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies have ushered in an era of elucidating CCC at single-cell resolution. Herein, we present miRTalk, a pioneering approach for inferring CCC mediated by EV-derived miRNA-target interactions (MiTIs). The benchmarking against simulated and real-world datasets demonstrates the superior performance of miRTalk, and the application to four disease scenarios reveals the in-depth MiTI-mediated CCC mechanisms. Collectively, miRTalk can infer EV-derived MiTI-mediated CCC with scRNA-seq data, providing new insights into the intercellular dynamics of biological processes.