Vascular smooth muscle selective deletion of Srf

Previous efforts to conditionally delete the Srf transcription factor in smooth muscle lineages were met with early demise of the mouse due to a gastrointestinal (GI) obstruction phenotype. We have developed a new, more VSMC selective Cre recombinase mouse (Itga8-CreERT2), that circumvents the GI phenotype thus affording the opportunity to evaluate, in an unambiguous manner, VSMC phenotypes where Srf is reduced. The mice live for at least 6 months post-tamoxifen and here we report the first RNA-seq experiments in mouse aortic SMC where Srf is reduced. Overall design: Mice homozygous or heterozygous for a floxed Srf allele and hemizygous for the Itga8-CreERT2 driver were treated with 5 daily doses of 33mg/kg Tamoxifen (i.p.). Aortae from the experimental homozygous cKO (n=3) or the control heterozygous cKO (n=3) were harvested 10 days following the last tamoxifen injection. Only 2 homozygous cKO replicates are reported here due to an outlier effect (or error in sampling) in one of the experimental samples. Thus, the data herein reflect only 2 homoygous cKOs and 3 heterozygous cKO controls.