Fig. 2: Pericytes adopt an altered state in MI.

a Experimental scheme and assessment of cell proliferation by EdU incorporation on gated populations (Hic1⁻ mural cells/Schwann cells = LIN⁻YFP⁻CD146⁺, Hic1⁺ mural cells = LIN⁻YFP⁺CD146⁺, Fibroblasts = LIN⁻YFP⁺CD146⁻, Endothelial cells = LIN⁺YFP⁻CD146⁺) at steady state (SS) and day 4, 7, and 21 after LAD ligation (n = 8, 3, 4, and 4, respectively, pooled from ≥3 experiments). LIN = CD45 and CD31. Mice were administered with EdU IP one day before harvest. A two-way ANOVA with Dunnett’s post hoc test was used to compare the means of % EdU⁺ cells to SS in each respective gate. P-value: <0.0001, <0.0001, <0.0001, <0.0001, and 0.0395. Asterisks indicate statistically significant changes: P < 0.05 (*), P < 0.01 (**), P < 0.001 (***), P < 0.0001 (****). Data are presented as mean ± standard error of the mean. b UMAP projection of 15,355 LIN⁻CD146⁺ cardiac cells colored by subset annotations at SS and day 3, 7, and 42 PI. Ven. VSMC, venous/venular vascular smooth muscle cells; Art. VSMC, arterial/arteriolar vascular smooth muscle cells; PER, pericytes. c Normalized expression of cell cycle genes differentially upregulated in act. PER. d Immunofluorescence microscopy of the infarcted heart stained for CD31 (gray) and EdU (magenta) in Pdgfra-EGFP/Cspg4-DsRed (green/red) mice on day 7 PI (with EdU regimen starting at day 3). The infarct zone (IZ) is delineated from the remote zone (RZ) by dotted lines and a magnified inset (blue box) is provided to show EdU⁺ pericytes indicated by arrows. Scale bar = 100 µm or 25 µm (inset). Representative image of three biological replicates. e, f Assessment of temporally regulated DEGs associated with “ECM organization” (e) and “blood vessel development” (f) in pericytes. Venn diagrams represent the number of overlapping and unique DEGs mapped to each GO term across time points. Strip plots display the average scaled expression of DEGs with the means taken to generate the trend line. Heatmaps represent the relative average normalized expression of genes of interest. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.