ALDH2 and carotid atherosclerosis: To prioritize a manageable subset for further analysis, we chose 16 genes that represented a wide range of putative functions, including 13 with increased expression in mesenchymal cells in both coronary and carotid atherosclerosis (ALDH2, C1S, COL4A2, CTTN, DSTN, FHL1, GEM, LMOD1, LOXL1, LRP1, MFGE8, PLPP3, and TIMP2), and a few that were detected as markers in coronary (CRISPLD2) or carotid (PDGFD and TNS1) plaques alone (Figure 1D; Table S1).