C3AR1 is found in macrophages, is modulated by MASLD/MASH in humans, and is induced by a murine dietary model of MASH.
A) Relative C3AR1 human tissue expression level by tissue, derived from deep sequencing of the mRNA combined dataset (HPA and GTEx) in the Human Protein Atlas, shown as normalized transcripts per million (nTPM). Liver is highlighted in purple and immunologic tissues are highlighted in red.
B) Single-cell RNA sequencing distribution of C3AR1 expression in human liver (tSNE, t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding).
C) Analysis of CFD and C3AR1 expression from liver biopsy samples in patients with MASH, MASLD, obesity without MASLD, and age-matched healthy controls (n = 12-16 per group, Welch t test with Holm-Šídák correction for multiple comparisons).
D) Weight curve in male and female flox/flox control mice placed on GAN high-fat diet compared to regular diet (RD) controls (males, n = 7; females, n = 6).
E) Representative liver section staining by Masson’s Trichrome in male control mice on RD or GAN diet for 28 weeks (scale bar = 100 mm).
F) Lipid droplet area quantification in liver sections from male control mice, excluding vessel lumens (RD, n = 3; GAN, n = 7).
G) Collagen area quantification in liver sections of male control mice (RD, n = 3; GAN, n = 7).
H) Gene expression of key macrophage or fibrosis genes in male control mice on GAN or RD (n = 6 per group).
Unpaired two-tailed Student’s t test (Except 1C as above). Annotations: *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001