Fig. 7. Pericyte-deficient mice expressing myelin-specific TCR develop neurological symptoms accompanied by immune cell infiltration. (A) Scoring of cerebellar ataxia in Pdgfbret/ret × Pdgfbwt/ret;2D2tg crossing offspring. Dashed black line indicates the mean baseline score of control mice (ataxia score 1, occasional slip during the ledge test; n = 7–11 mice per genotype). (B) Immunofluorescent detection of CD45hi leukocyte infiltrates and microglia (in red) in the striatum in Pdgfbret/ret;2D2neg and Pdgfbret/ret;2D2tg mice. Blood vessels are in green (collagen IV). (C) Representative flow cytometry pseudocolor plots showing the manual gating of microglia and other immune cell populations in the brain. (C) Quantification of absolute cell numbers of immune cells (gated as shown in SI Appendix, Fig. S13A) in the brains of control mice and Pdgfbret/ret;2D2neg and Pdgfbret/ret;2D2tg animals. Pdgfbret/ret;2D2tg mice were euthanized at the peak of cerebellar ataxia symptoms (ataxia score of 6–9). Age of animals was 2–3 mo (C). Pooled data from four individual experiments. Data are presented as the mean ± SD. One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s post hoc test was used to determine the statistical significance. (Scale bars: 100 μm.)
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