Fig. 3. Wound closure is accelerated in the absence of 3β1 integrin. Full-thickness wounds were generated on either side of the dorsal midline in Itga3^flox/flox or Itga3^flox/flox; K14-Cre mice, and excised 3 or 7 days after injury. (A) Schematic representation of a wound. D, dermis; E, epidermis; Es, eschar; F, fat tissue; G, granulation tissue. (B) H&E-stained sections depicting wound closure 7 days after wounding in Itga3^flox/flox (top) and Itga3^flox/flox; K14-Cre mice (bottom). Arrows indicate the edges of the migrating epithelium. The number of closed wounds after 7 days of migration is represented in the bar graph. Depicted are the means ± s.e.m. of at least 40 wounds pooled from four independent experiments (^*P<0.05). Scale bar, 500 µm. (C) The distance covered by the migrating epidermis (indicated by the dotted line) was quantified 3 days after wounding in Itga3^flox/flox (top) and Itga3^flox/flox; K14-Cre mice (bottom). The graph indicates the means ± s.e.m. of at least 35 wounds pooled from three experiments (^*P<0.05). Scale bar, 250 µm. (D) Proliferation in the re-epithelializing wounds was assessed by injecting BrdU 2 or 4 days after wounding, and determining the ratio of BrdU⁺ cells over the total number of cells using ImageJ. Depicted are the means ± s.e.m. of at least 30 images. Scale bar: 150 µm.