METRNL and Hepatic fibrosis: To investigate the impact of HSC-specific Metrnl deletion on liver fibrosis, we created HSC-specific knockout mice by crossing Metrnlflox/flox mice with Lrat-Cre mice to generated Metrnlf/f;Cre+ mice, with specific inactivation of the Metrnl gene in HSC cells (referred to as Lrat-Metrnl).