ACSL4 and Stroke: These results in mice were replicated in rats since one major issue for experimental stroke research is the reproducibility of animal models.33,34 Laser speckle signals indicated that knockout of ACSL4 did not affect the blood flow in the rat cortex after MCAO/R (Fig. 7k, l), confirming that ACSL4 KO was not protective simply by affecting hemodynamics.