Extended Data Fig. 8: String vessels occur in the deeper part of the vascular tree. | Nature Neuroscience

Extended Data Fig. 8: String vessels occur in the deeper part of the vascular tree.

From: The SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro causes microvascular brain pathology by cleaving NEMO in brain endothelial cells

Extended Data Fig. 8

a, String vessels were tracked in confocal 3D scans of the cortex after staining against CD31, collagen IV and smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) (left). Since α-SMA is expressed in arteries and arterioles (middle), the branching order can be determined (right). String vessels positive for α-SMA are defined as arteriole string vessels, adjacent string vessels as 1st capillary string vessels, etc. (right). The image was obtained by cropping a section from a NemobeKO tilescan from the dataset used for quantification in (b) (N = 3 animals). Scale bar, 50 µm. b, Tracking of string vessels in the hippocampus and hypothalamus of NemobeKO mice revealed that more string vessels were present in higher branch orders of the vascular tree in NemobeKO mice. N = 3 animals. Means ± s.e.m. are shown, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01. Detailed information about the exact test statistics, sidedness and values are provided in Supplementary Table 5.

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