Inferring microenvironmental regulation of gene expression from single-cell RNA sequencing data using scMLnet with an application to COVID-19

Inferring how gene expression in a cell is influenced by cellular microenvironment is of great importance yet challenging. In this study, we present a single-cell RNA-sequencing data based multilayer network method (scMLnet) that models not only functional intercellular communications but also intracellular gene regulatory networks (https://github.com/SunXQlab/scMLnet). scMLnet was applied to a scRNA-seq dataset of COVID-19 patients to decipher the microenvironmental regulation of expression of SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 that has been reported to be correlated with inflammatory cytokines and COVID-19 severity. The predicted elevation of ACE2 by extracellular cytokines EGF, IFN-gamma or TNF-alpha were experimentally validated in human lung cells and the related signaling pathway were verified to be significantly activated during SARS-COV-2 infection. Our study provided a new approach to uncover inter-/intra-cellular signaling mechanisms of gene expression and revealed microenvironmental regulators of ACE2 expression, which may facilitate designing anti-cytokine therapies or targeted therapies for controlling COVID-19 infection. In addition, we summarized and compared different methods of scRNA-seq based inter-/intra-cellular signaling network inference for facilitating new methodology development and applications.