Fig. 2
Adult injury induces a population of WT1-positive cells by activation of qHSCs that derive from the embryonic hepatic mesothelium. a Lineage labelling of hepatic mesothelium-derived cells was induced at E10.5 in a further cohort of WT1CreERT2/+;Ai14 animals and fibrosis induced by iterative injury with CCl4. b Lineage-labelled cells after injury were confirmed to be aHSCs by confocal microscopy demonstrating colocalization of the lineage label (RFP—lilac) with the HSC marker GFAP (yellow). Activated lineage-labelled cells were quantified after staining of injured livers for WT1 (green), lineage label (RFP—lilac), and αSMA (yellow) to demonstrate a population of WT1-positive activated cells originating from mesothelial-derived qHSCs. c 78.1 ± 5.3% of WT1-positive cells were lineage labelled, compared with 20.5 ± 3.7% of WT1-negative cells (Welch two-sample t-test t(7.144) = −7.9601, *p = 8.437 × 10–5, n = 5 animals, data are represented as individual points with median (centre line), first and third quartiles (lower and upper box limits), 1.5× interquartile range (whiskers). Scale bars 100 μm
