Fig. 2: AV zonation and post-capillary venous characteristics of the dermal microvasculature.
From: Angiopoietin–TIE2 feedforward circuit promotes PIK3CA-driven venous malformations
a, Experimental scheme for Smart-Seq2 scRNA-seq analysis of dermal BECs from 5-week-old Pik3caH1047R; Cdh5-CreERT2 (n = 5) and Ctrl (n = 3) mice 2 weeks after topical application of 25 µg of 4-OHT to each ear. b, UMAP representation of 321 dermal BECs from Ctrl mice. Four BEC clusters after Harmony batch effect correction are annotated and schematically matched to their anatomic position within the vascular bed on the right (color coded according to UMAP). c, Dot plot of markers defining the four subclusters of BECs from b. Exemplary arterial (Sox17) and venous (Emcn) markers are highlighted. d, Whole-mount immunofluorescence of ear skin showing EMCN and SOX17 expression across the AV axis in a Ctrl mouse. Antibody against αSMA was used to visualize SMC coverage in arteries. Arrowheads are color coded according to UMAP in b, indicating vessel type. Similar results were obtained from two mice. Scale bar, 200 µm. e, GO enrichment analysis applying GOstats to the top vein and artery cluster markers using a standard hypergeometric test with a significance threshold of P < 0.00001). P values of GO terms are encoded by color gradient; NA indicates no enrichment. Groups of cluster-specific terms are color coded accordingly. f, UMAP representation and annotation of 36,590 dermal BECs from 23 healthy human individuals after Seurat’s anchor-based integration. g, Dot plot of relative marker expression defining the six subclusters of BECs from f. Dot sizes in c and g represent transcript percentage in each cluster. Color illustrates the average expression compared across displayed clusters. FACS, fluorescence-activated cell sorting. NA, not applicable. Panel a created with BioRender.com.
