Fig. 3: Med13l knockout impairs the differentiation of cortical neural progenitors.

A Representative images of the dorsal view of the whole brains from WT and KO mice at E13.5. Scale bars, 1 mm. B Quantitative analysis of surface area of the cerebral cortex (outlined by the dashed lines in (A) of WT and KO mice at E13.5. N = 8 (WT), 4 (KO). C Representative images of WT and KO mouse brains at E13.5, stained for TBR1 (magenta) and DAPI (blue). Scale bars, 500 μm for the panoramic view and 100 μm for the local view. D Comparison of the number of TBR1⁺ cells in the cortex of WT and KO mice at E13.5. N = 9 (WT), 9 (KO). E Representative images of WT and KO mouse brains at E13.5, stained for DCX (magenta), TBR2 (green), and DAPI (blue). Scale bars, 500 μm for the panoramic view and 100 μm for the local view. F, G Quantitative analysis of the thickness of DCX⁺ cell layer and the density of intermediate neural progenitor cells (TBR2⁺) in the cortex of WT and KO mice at E13.5. N = 6 (WT), 6 (KO) in (F); N = 7 (WT), 10 (KO) in (G). H Representative images of PAX6 (magenta) and DAPI (blue) staining in the cortex of WT and KO mice at E13.5. The selected regions (white rectangular dashed box) are shown at high magnification on the right. Scale bars, 500 μm and 100 μm for the low and high magnification images, respectively. I Quantitative analysis of the thickness of the neural progenitor cell layer (PAX6⁺) in the cortex at E13.5. N = 9 (WT), 8 (KO). J Representative images of Ki67 (green), BrdU (magenta), and DAPI (blue) staining in the cortex of mouse brains at E13.5, 24 h after the BrdU injection. Scale bar, 100 μm. K Percentage of cell-cycle exit (Q-fraction) in the VZ/SVZ of WT and KO mice at E13.5. N = 4 (WT), 4 (KO). Data are presented as mean ± SEM and analyzed by two-tailed Student’s t-test in (B, D, F, G), and one-tailed Student’s t-test in (I) and (K). *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ns not significant. Error bars represent SEM.