MERTK and periodontitis: We summarized existing RNA-seq data and showed that, compared with normal control, MerTK is highly expressed (24.2 %, p = 0.0003) in age related macular degeneration and highly expressed in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (24.5 %, p < 0.0001), and periodontitis (8.4 %, p < 0.0001) (Fig. 5C).