IHC confirmed protein expression by border-forming astrocytes for many of these molecules after SCI and stroke, and revealed that whereas certain proteins such as Gfap and S100a6 were readily detectable in essentially all Sox9-positive lesion border astrocytes, many proteins, such as Lgals3 and others discussed below, were highly expressed in some lesion border astrocytes that were intermingled with other astrocytes with low or no detectable expression (Fig. 4d and Extended Data Fig. 4b). Here, GFAP is linked to stroke disorder.