Endothelial loss of Zeb2 distorts the hepatic angioarchitecture and aggravates liver fibrosis in mice

Expression of the Zinc-Finger E-Box-binding Homeobox (Zeb)2 is enriched in Liver Sinusoidal Endothelial cells (LSECs), but its role in liver ECs remains unknown. We performed RNA sequencing on the main liver cell types from wild-type mice and mice lacking Zeb2 specifically in endothelial cells to identify cell-autonomous and non-autonomous RNA expression changes and to find pathways and GO-terms affected by genetic Zeb2 inactivation. Overall design: Endothelial cells, Kupffer cells, hepatic stellate cells and hepatocytes (n=2) were isolated from livers of wild-type and endothelial-specific Zeb2 knock-out mice by density centrifugation and FACS. RNA was isolated using Reliaprep (Promega) and was sequenced according to the Smart-seq2 method.