Fig. 7: Embryonic Hic1⁺ MPs give rise to distinct populations of adult stromal cells.

a Schematic representation of strategy employed for lineage tracing embryonic Hic1⁺ MPs into adulthood. b UMAP coloured by cluster of scRNA-seq data from sorted tdTomato⁺ cells isolated from the TA muscle of lineage-traced Hic1^CreERT2; R26^tdTomato mice. c Heatmap of scRNA-seq data showing enriched genes within each cluster. d–i Representative immunofluorescence images and violin plots of each cell population identified through lineage tracing performed from E10 until P56 on Hic1^CreERT2; R26^tdTomato mice. TdTomato⁺ populations persist as cells from the following lineages: fibroblasts (d); tenocytes and myotenocytes (e); pericytes (f); vascular smooth muscle cells (g); smooth muscle cell progenitors (h); and perineural cells (i). White arrowheads highlight cells of interest. White-dotted boxes highlight regions that are magnified in larger panels. n = 3 biologically independent mice for panels a–i. Scale bars, 50 µm. j Violin plots of select transcripts. k Schematic of the diverse mesenchymal limb lineages captured by labelling at E10 from development into adulthood. BMSPs, bone marrow stromal progenitors; DFs, dermal fibroblasts; EnCs, endoneural cells; Fibro, fibroblasts; PDFs, papillary dermal fibroblasts; PnCs, perineural cells; RDFs, reticular dermal fibroblasts; SMCPs, smooth muscle cell progenitors; vSMCs; vascular smooth muscle cells; WAT, white adipose tissue. Created with BioRender.com.