FIGURE 1 from Activation of Kras^G12D in Subset of Alveolar Type II Cells Enhances Cellular Plasticity in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Activation of Kras^G12D transforms type II cells to dual-positive type I and type II expressing cells. A, Experimental outline to compare type I, type II, and double-positive (type I/II+) population between wild-type and Kras^G12D-mutant mice. B, Immunofluorescent images showing sections of left lobes of Sftpc-CreER; Rosa26-TdTomato (top) and Sftpc-CreER; LSL-Kras^G12D; Rosa26-TdTomato (bottom) mice, 4 weeks after single dose of tamoxifen injection stained with DAPI (blue), Sftpc (green) and Rage (red). Right panel shows higher magnification of boxed area in left panels. Note that many tumor cells are Sftpc+Rage+ (marked with white arrows) in Kras-mutant mice. C, Quantitative analysis of B. D, FACS analysis for comparing type I, type II, and double-positive (type I/II+) population between wild-type and Kras^G12D mice. E, Quantitative analysis of D. F, qPCR analysis for comparing the gene expression of some of the type I marker and type II marker genes between double-positive cells and total epithelial cells from Sftpc-CreER; Kras^G12D; TdTomato mice. Results shown in B and D are representative of three independent experiments. C, E, and F represent data from three independent experiments. Error bars represent the mean ± SEM values and significance is defined as *, P ≤ 0.05; **, P ≤ 0.01; and ***, P ≤ 0.001.