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. 2022 Feb 28;18(5):2163–2180. doi: 10.7150/ijbs.69281

Figure 8.

Figure 8

CX40 mediates TET1s-induced endothelial barrier reinforcement. (A) Heatmap of the top 20 selected upregulated genes by RNA sequencing. (B) RT-qPCR was used to test the mRNA levels of the top 5 upregulated genes from RNA-seq and three hemodynamic-sensitive genes. (C) The CX40 protein expression level was quantified by WB (n=6 per group). (D-L) Stable CX40-/- p-HUVECs were generated by transfecting human connexin 40-specific CRISPR/Cas9 KO plasmids. Then, TET1s-adenovirus was used to transfect CX40-/- and CX40+/+ p-HUVECs to generate CX40+/++NC, CX40+/++OE, CX40-/-+NC and CX40-/-+OE p-HUVECs. (D) The fluorescence intensity of the lower chamber medium was tested as described in Fig. 3C (n>6 per group). (E, H) Immunofluorescence staining for F-actin and VE-cadherin. The green dotted line indicates the intercellular space area. (F-G) Quantitative analysis of single-cell F-actin length and intercellular space area to image E (n>10 per group). (I-K) Quantitative analysis of VE-cadherin discontinuity, intercellular space area and ratio of VE-cadherin in several morphological categories to image H (n>10 per group). All data were presented as the mean ± SD.