Depiction of the conditional ablation strategy of JNK1 from lung epithelial cells.

(A) Schematic of JNK1 ablation from airway epithelial cells using transgenic mice expressing CCSP-rtTA, TetO-Cre, and Jnk1^loxP/loxP alleles. Upon feeding doxycycline (dox)- containing food, JNK1 is ablated from airway epithelial cells, designated as ΔEpi Jnk1. (B) Confirmation of ablation of JNK1 in airway epithelial cells. 3 weeks after initiation of Dox feeding, single cells lung suspensions were created and cells were sorted by flow cytometry. The EpCAM positive, CD45 negative, Sca1 low fraction of lung cells was isolated for assessment of JNK1 expression via Western Blot analysis. Note that JNK1 was only ablated from the EpCAM positive, CD45 negative, Sca1low fraction of lung cells. (C) Visualization of Cre-recombination in CCSP-rtTA, TetO-Cre-expressing mice which were bred with Tomato red reporter mice. Red: Cre-expressing cells. Scale bars: 50 μm.