AXL and hepatocellular carcinoma: To assess target genes of Gas6/Axl signaling, which regulates tumor-intrinsic gene expression [7,40], we examined mesenchymal-like HCC cells expressing Axl (wild type; wt) versus CRISPR/Cas9-mediated Axl knockout cells (KO, Axl−) versus Axl-KO cells harboring reconstituted Axl expression (Axl− wt) by RNA-seq (Figure 1A).