normal phenotype
• homozygotes are viable and fertile and exhibit normal cartilage development and enchondral bone formation, with no detectable differences in the onset of primary ossification, in vascular invasion, or in proliferation of chondrocytes relative to wild-type littermates
• surprisingly, no compensatory upregulation of tenomodulin (a close homologue also known as tendin), or other angiogenic or antiangiogenic factors is observed
• in addition, homozygotes display normal eye development with no evidence of pathological vascularization, as well as normal thymus development with no differences in the cortex/matrix proportion or thymic vessel density relative to wild-type littermates
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