VIM and diabetes mellitus: We further evaluated the protein levels of EMT markers in Akt2fl/fl and Akt2 cKO RPE tissue of the 10-month-old (8 months of diabetes) mice and found diabetes increased the protein levels of EMT markers Snail, Twist1, and Vimentin in that in control Akt2fl/fl RPE, while Akt2 cKO significantly inhibited the diabetes-induced changes in EMT markers (Fig. 4A–D), consistent with our mRNA data.