DOI: 10.5061/dryad.kh18932kp
title: Micro-computed tomography data for: Resolving the design principles that control postnatal vascular growth and scaling

description: After birth, tissues grow until they reach adult size, with each organ
 exhibiting unique cellular dynamics, growth patterns, and stem or non-stem
 cell sources. Using multiscale experimental and computational approaches,
 we found that aortic enlargement follows distinct growth principles,
 scaling with the vertebral column. Expansion proceeds via two temporally
 coordinated, spatially stochastic waves of proliferation aligned with
 blood flow, each with unique cell-cycle kinetics, with the first wave
 featuring cycles as short as 6 h. Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed
 increased fatty acid metabolism accompanying cell enlargement.
 Mathematical modeling and experiments showed that endothelial cell
 extrusion is essential for maintaining homeostatic aortic size as it
 adjusts for proliferation excess. Using a genetic model of achondroplasia,
 we mechanistically demonstrated that the aorta preserves proper scaling by
 increasing cell extrusion while keeping proliferation rates intact. These
 findings provide a blueprint of the principles orchestrating aortic
 growth, which relies entirely on the proliferation of resident
 differentiated cells.
description: # Resolving the design principles that control postnatal vascular growth
 and scaling Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.kh18932kp](10.5061/dryad.kh18932kp) Data were collected as
 described in the associated publication. Sam Brennan and Stuart R. Stock
 (Northwestern University) collected the microCT data. Stuart Stock made
 the measurements of aortic and vertebral lengths. Stuart Stock curated the
 data sets. **Description of the data and file structure** microCT scan of
 mouse spines and aortas filled with contrast agent using a Bruker SkyScan
 1272 ### Files and variables 1\) microCT slices and metadata for wild type
 mice 2\) microCT slices and metadata for osx-cre mice. plus and minus
 denote KO and nonexpressing This data set consists of 1) microCT slices
 and 2) their associated meta-data for the Cell Systems paper “Resolving
 the design principles that control postnatal vascular growth and scaling.”
 Danielle Pi, Jonas Braun, et al. (in press 2025). The data consist of
 image sets of the arterial arch and descending aorta and the vertebrae of
 wild type mice and vertebrae of osx-cre knock-out mice of different ages.
 The data are for wild type mice (30 directories) and for cre-osx mice (37
 directories). The directories whose names begin with the year “2022” or
 “2023” are the wild type mice. The other directories are cre-osx; their
 names begin with “P”. Each directory contains the data for one specimen.
 Within each directory, there is a text file and a subdirectory. The text
 file contains the meta-data for that scan; this contains useful
 information such as reconstructed volume element (voxel) size which varied
 between scans of different animals. The subdirectory contains some
 alignment images and a stack of multiple hundred reconstructed slices
 which can be in a TIF or BMP format. The alignment images are only useful
 for the microCT instrument’s reconstruction system and should be ignored.
 Typically, the author of this record (S.R. Stock) loads the stack of
 reconstructed slices within a directory into ImageJ using the
 “Import/Image sequence” command starting at image 10. The microCT data and
 associated meta-data are grouped by animal. The naming conventional is
 "PXX_YY" or "PXX-YY" where XX is the animal age in
 days (from P5 to P60) and the digits YY give the animal number. Single
 digits designate males and double digits represent females. The use of
 dash or underscore is interchangable. ## Access information Other publicly
 accessible locations of the data: * not applicable Data was derived from
 the following sources: * not applicable