Figure 6: Endothelial GPCR pattern in atherosclerosis.

(a) Average expression strength of SM marker Myh11 in SMC from aorta (SMao) or skeletal muscle vasculature (SMsk), or in Cdh5-positive aortal cells. (b) Percentage of cells expressing selected GPCRs in freshly isolated EC from skeletal muscle (ECsk) or brain (ECbr), as well as in Cdh5^pos; Myh11^low aortal cells or aortal SMC (SMao). (c) Heat map of GPCR expression in aortal EC from healthy mice (ECao) and ApoE-deficient mice kept for 16 weeks on high-fat diet (ECaoApo16 w) (12 and 16 cells from four to six mice, respectively). Horizontal bars on the right side visualize expression frequency (in %) (for full data set, Supplementary Fig. 6). (d) Comparative analysis of gene expression strength in ECao and ECaoApo16w. (e) Average number of GPCRs expressed in individual ECao from healthy and atherosclerotic mice. (f) Changes in endothelial gene expression in response to acute inflammatory activation by LPS or chronic inflammatory activation in atherosclerotic mice (n.e., not expressed). All expression data are calculated as 2^{(Limit of detection(LoD) Ct—sample Ct)}; LoD Ct was set to 24. Function-defining genes are shown in blue. Data in a,d,e, are means±s.e.m.; comparisons in d,e were performed using two-sample t-test. *P<0.05; **P<0.01.