MAPK3 and atherosclerosis: Bao et al. (1999) showed that high temporal gradients of shear but not steady shear stress correlate with the expression of atherosclerosis-related genes in ECs and stimulation of endothelial and smooth muscle cells and exert a promitogenic effect on EC (White et al. 2001), possibly mediated by ERK1/2 pathway (White et al. 2005).