Fig. 4: Quantification of endothelial to mesenchymal transition (EndMT) upon loss of SOX9.

a Schematic diagram demonstrating experimental set up using conditional vascular specific Sox9 knockout mice (Sox9^fl/fl/Cdh5-Cre^ER RosaYFP – Sox9^eKO). b Examples of immunofluorescence staining of skin wound sections at day 7 (D7) with endothelial markers CD31, lineage marker YFP and EndMT markers SLUG or αSMA. Scale bar = 50 µm. c Quantification of EndMT showing overlap of YFP + cells with either endothelial and mesenchymal markers such as SLUG, αSMA and FSP1 (**p < 0.01 vs Sox9^eWT; n = 5 biologically independent animals; mean ± SD; p value was calculated by two-tailed unpaired t test). d, e qPCR analysis of key endothelial and EndMT genes in EVP from Sox9^eKO compared to Sox9^eWT (**p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 vs Sox9^eWT; n = 3; cells were sorted from three groups of five biologically independent animals; mean ± SD; p value was calculated by two-way ANOVA with multiple comparison of row mean).