Moreover, among the four established surrogate molecular markers for fusion status in rhabdomyosarcoma samples, namely the upregulation of TFAP2B, MYOG, and NOS1, coupled with the repression of HMGA2 in fusion positive ARMS [33], both bulk DE analysis of sorted subpopulations and NBID analysis of subpopulations inferred from scRNA-seq revealed repression of TFAP2B and MYOG as well as upregulation of HMGA2 in the CD44high subpopulation (Additional file 2: Table S12), suggesting that the CD44high subpopulation represents a less differentiated, stem-like cell subpopulation. The gene discussed is NOS1; the disease is rhabdomyosarcoma.