{"doi":"10.1101/2020.07.01.180752","title":"Pericytes Directly Communicate with Emerging Endothelial Cells During Vasculogenesis","abstract":"Summary Pericytes (PCs), cells that extend along capillaries to contribute stability and other critical functions to established vasculature, are attracting attention from various fields involving vascular-related pathologies. Here, we demonstrate primary evidence of PC communication with endothelial cells (ECs) prior to tube coalescence. Observations of apparent PCs during early embryogenesis urged development of a mouse embryonic stem cell line (DR-ESCs), enabling unique dual-reporter investigations into earliest PC-EC interactions. Live imaging of differentiating DR-ESCs corroborated emergence of a PC lineage, which preceded EC differentiation, and further revealed highly dynamic PC-EC interactions during coordinated vessel formation. We show direct PC-EC communication via cell microinjection and dye-transfer, and RNA-seq analysis indicates a PC-EC coupling mechanism via gap junction Connexin43 (Cx43), exclusively up-regulated throughout DR-ESC differentiation. High resolution imaging of embryonic and postnatal mouse vasculature substantiates Cx43 plaques at PC-EC borders. These findings indicate a new role for PCs during vasculogenesis via Cx43-mediated communication with ECs.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":130316,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.954,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":582639,"name":"Bhanu P. Tewari","orcid":"0000-0001-8803-5950","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583018,"name":"Logan Dunkenberger","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583019,"name":"Samantha Bond","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":582640,"name":"A Savelli","orcid":"0000-0002-1800-9893","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583020,"name":"Jordan Darden","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":392670,"name":"Huaning Zhao","orcid":"0000-0002-7931-4330","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":582641,"name":"Michael D. Powell","orcid":"0000-0003-2881-1334","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264329,"name":"Kenneth J. Oestreich","orcid":"0000-0002-3004-072X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":280582,"name":"Harald Sontheimer","orcid":"0000-0002-5843-9871","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583021,"name":"Sophie Dal-Pra","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302893,"name":"John C. Chappell","orcid":"0000-0002-0427-5170","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":582638,"name":"Laura Beth Payne","orcid":"0000-0001-6439-5329","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":82,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:15:53.196774Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}