APOE and atherosclerosis: Next, we used the Confetti model in Apoe–/– animals (Myh11-Confetti-Apoe) to assess whether infrequent activation of VSMC proliferation also underlies oligoclonal VSMC contribution observed in HFD-induced atherosclerosis.6–9 Contiguous regions with VSMCs of a single colour were evident at early stages of lesion formation in animals fed a HFD for 6.5–15 weeks (Figure3A and B).7 Quantification showed increasing plaque size in HFD-fed animals at 11 compared with 6.5 weeks, as expected (see Supplementary material online, Figure S2A).