Fig. 3.

Continuous endoglin overexpression impairs pericyte recruitment in vitro and delays vessel maturation in vivo. a Upper panel: Pseudocapillary-like structures formed by EA.hy926 cells cocultured with HBVPs in Matrigel^®. Lower panel: HBVP attachment to EA.hy926 monolayers in culture. b Quantification of the ratio between HBVPs and ECs in pseudocapillary-like structures [n(Mock) = 3, n(ENG⁺) = 3; p = 0.0433]. c Quantification of the HBVP fluorescent signal over EA.hy926 monolayers [n(Mock) = 3, n(ENG⁺) = 3; p = 0.0128]. d Upper panel: NG2 (red) and FITC-lectin (green) staining in the retinal vasculature of P6 pups, showing merged signals (yellow) in WT retinas and noncovered endothelium (arrowheads) and mural cells not bound to vessels (asterisk) in ENG⁺ retinas. Lower panel: NG2 (red) and CD31 (green) staining in plugs of Matrigel^®. e Quantification of the ratio of pericytes that are bound to the endothelium with respect to the total number of pericytes in the retinal vasculature of P6 pups [n(WT) = 4, n(ENG⁺) = 6; p < 0.0001]. f Quantification of pericyte recovery in plugs of Matrigel^® vessel, where 1 represents low coverage and 3 represents high coverage [n(WT) = 4, n(ENG⁺) = 3; p < 0.0001]. g α-SMA immunostaining in the ischemic soleus muscle 14 days post-ischemia. h Quantification of the ratio of vessels in ischemic soleus muscle that are partially or fully covered by α-SMA immunostaining [n(WT) = 3, n(ENG⁺) = 3; p = 1]. i NG2 (red) and FITC-lectin (green) staining in the retinal vasculature of adult mice