Isolation of A Unique Hepatic Stellate Cell Population Expressing Integrin a8 from Embryonic Mouse Livers

There are a few markers for embryonic hepatic stellate cells in mouse embryonic livers To identify genes expressed in embryonic hepatic stellate cells, we separated ALCAM+, ALCAM+ PDPN+, and ALCAM+ PDPN- cells from E12.5 mouse livers and analyzed these cells by microarray analysis. After finding expression of Itga8 in ALCAM+ PDPN- cells, we further separated ALCAM+ ITGA8- and ALCAM+ ITGA8+ cells and analyzed by microarray. Total RNA was extracted with RNAqueous Micro (Ambion) and the probes for the microarray were synthesized using the Ovation RNA amplification system V2 and FL-Ovation cDNA Biotin module V2 (Nugen). The labeled probes were hybridized with GeneChip Mouse Genome 430 2.0 arrays (Affymetrix) and signals were analyzed with Genomic Suite software (Partek).