Foxf1-specific differential gene expression in collagen I-positive murine mesenchymal cells.

Type I Collagen and Foxf1 expressing double transgenic mice that were labeled for green flourescent protein (GFP) and tdTomato reporters, respectively, were used to sort out three populations. We found that mesenchymal populations which expressed both type I collagen and Foxf1 also expressed high levels of Gli and this population carried a Col14a1 fibroblast signature while the type I collagen expressing MCs that did not express Foxf1 expressed high levels of integrin alpha 8 and carried a Col13a1 fibroblast signature. Overall design: Three different subsets were sorted such that cell populations expressed both type 1 collagen and Foxf1 (DBL), or only type 1 collagen(ColGFP), or only Foxf1 (TDOnly). RNA was isolated from cell population subsets and submitted to the UM DNA Sequencing Core where ribogone ribosomal RNA depletion was performed prior to RNA-Seq analysis. Bioinformatic analyses was provided by the University of Michigan Bioinformatics Core in the form of differential expression at gene and isoform level, GO annotation of differentially expressed genes, functional enrichment analysis of set of differentially expressed genes and diagnostic plots.