Mouse Anesthesia and Tissue Harvesting

Eight- to 16-week-old male and female mice were used for experiments; sexes are recorded in each figure legend. Animals were housed in the Dean McGee Eye Institute's specific-pathogen-free vivarium for at least 1 week prior to experimentation. Wild-type (WT) C57BL/6 and OT-II TCR transgenic mice were obtained from the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME, USA). Transgenic C57BL/6-background alpha smooth muscle actin GFP-reporter mice (α-SMA-GFP)^{32 (link)} were bred in-house. Transgenic C57BL/6-background mice expressing a floxed vascular endothelial growth factor A allele (Vegfa^flox)^{33 (link),34 (link)} were bred within our institution's Rodent Barrier Facility and were originally provided by Genentech (South San Francisco, CA, USA). Mice were anesthetized by intraperitoneal (IP) injection with xylazine (6.6 mg/kg) and ketamine (100 mg/kg) for all procedures and euthanized by exsanguination via intracardiac perfusion with 10 mL PBS prior to tissue collection. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center approved all procedures. Experiments were conducted in accordance with the ARVO Statement for the Use of Animals in Ophthalmic and Vision Research.