Genetic Labeling of Prox1-Expressing Cells

As described previously, C57BL/6 J 9–12 week-old male mice were obtained from Jackson Laboratories (Bar Harbor, ME)^{15 (link)}. Prox1-Cre-ER^T2 (Jax # 022075; originally generated by Srinivasan and Oliver^{31 (link)}) crossed with Rosa26-tdTomato^fl/fl reporter (Jax # 007905) 15–20 week male and female mice were orally treated with 20 mg/ml tamoxifen (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) dissolved in corn oil (50 µg/per gram body weight) every other day over two weeks, inducing Cre recombinase activity and downstream tdTomato expression. Mice were housed in a temperature controlled, specific pathogen-free unit on a 12-h light–dark cycle. All mice were fed a liquid diet (PMI Micro-Stabilized Rodent Liquid Diet LD 101; TestDiet, St. Louis, MO) and water ad libitum. This study was approved by the Washington University in St. Louis Animal Studies Committee (Protocol 20170252 and 20170154) in accordance with the National Institute of Health laboratory animal care and use guidelines. This study is reported in accordance to the ARRIVE guidelines^{32 (link)}.