Fig. 5

Depletion of injury-activated glia in the granulation tissue impairs wound healing. a Representative macroscopic illustration of wound healing in Ctrl and Sox10 cKO animals at D0 and D7. b Longitudinal macroscopic quantification of individual wound areas at D2, D4, D7, and D9 in Ctrl and Sox10 cKO animals in relation to their respective initial size at D0. Data show a significant delay in wound closure at D7 upon Sox10 cKO. c H&E-stained sections of Ctrl and Sox10 cKO D7 wounds used for morphometric analysis of percentage of wound closure (length of newly formed epithelium (NFE)/length of NFE + length of gap between edges of wound epithelium (black dotted line) × 100), area of HPE, wound contraction (distance between wound border HFs (blue dotted line)), and re-epithelialisation (length of NFE). Analysis of D7 wound sections for the percentage of d wound closure, e area of HPE, f wound width, g re-epithelialisation. h Immunolabelling of myofibroblasts with α-SMA (green) in Ctrl and Sox10 cKO skin wound sections at D7. Dashed line delimits granulation tissue. i Quantification of the percentage of α-SMA⁺ area of the granulation tissue at D7 shows a reduction of the area occupied by myofibroblasts upon Sox10 cKO. Western blot quantification for j myofibroblast marker α-SMA and k Periostin (Postn) of D7 whole-wound protein extracts from Ctrl and Sox10 cKO animals. l Immunolabelling of α-SMA (green) and pSMAD2 (red) in Ctrl and Sox10 cKO skin wound sections at D7. Boxed regions in the dermis are shown in the insets at higher magnification as pSMAD2 single channel and merged with α-SMA channel. m Quantification of highly pSMAD2⁺ cells per α-SMA⁺ area of the granulation tissue at D7. Data are represented as mean ± SEM of N = 10, n = 39 (Ctrl), N = 13, n = 49 (Sox10 cKO) (b); N = 9, n = 35 (Ctrl), N = 13, n = 52 (Sox10 cKO) (d); N = 5, n = 18 (Ctrl), N = 6, n = 24 (Sox10 cKO) (e); N = 7, n = 28 (Ctrl), N = 8, n = 32 (Sox10 cKO) (f); N = 7, n = 28 (Ctrl), N = 10, n = 40 (Sox10 cKO) (g); N = 5, n = 19 (Ctrl), N = 5, n = 17 (Sox10 cKO) (i); N = 3, n = 6 per group (j, k); N = 8, n = 15 (Ctrl), N = 10, n = 20 (Sox10 cKO) (m). Scale bars, 200 µm