Fig. 5

Identification of the mechanism of abnormal CEA expression in COVID-19 patients’ and healthy volunteers’ PBMCs scRNA-seq data of 94,448 PBMCs from six patients with moderate COVID-19 and six healthy volunteers were download from the GEO database (accession no. GSE150728). The UAMP analysis identified 18 clusters and 10 cell types (B cell, B cell Naïve, CD4 + T cell, CD8 + T cell, macrophage–monocyte, myelocyte, natural killer cell, neutrophil, plasma cell, olatelets) (A, B). All types of immune cell were significantly differentiated and chemotactic in COVID-19 patients’ PBMCs compared to healthy controls (C). What is more, CEACAM1, CEACAM4, CEACAM6 and CEACAM8 were differentially expressing between PBMCs of COVID-19 patients and healthy controls while CEACAM1, CEACAM6 and CEACAM8 were significantly localized in a novel cell subtype annotated as “developing neutrophils,” which was significantly differentiated and chemotactic only in COVID-19 patients with ARDS reported by Wilk, A.J., et al. (D, E). Additionally, dot plots in F summarized the results of Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis of the DEGs of the developing neutrophils (F)