Fig. 1. Krause corpuscles are distributed across female and male mouse genitalia.
a, Illustration of the mouse clitoris (blue, black arrow) within the genital protrusion. b, Sagittal section (200 µm) of the clitoris stained for S100 and NF200. c, Examples of complex (left) and simple (right) Krause corpuscles in the clitoris. d, Illustration of the glans penis (arrow) externalized from the retracted prepuce. e, Sagittal section (200 µm) of the adult glans penis stained as in b. f, Examples of complex (left) and simple (right) Krause corpuscles in the penis. g, The total number of corpuscles summed across all sections of the clitoris or penis from each animal. Statistical analysis was performed using unpaired t-tests; P = 0.94; NS, not significant. n = 3 (female) and 4 (male) mice. h, The density of Krause corpuscles in the mouse clitoris and penis, compared with that of Meissner corpuscles in the digit (7 sections from 4 female mice; 8 sections from 2 male mice; and 15 sections from digits of 2 mice). i, Violin plot of the depth of corpuscles from the nearest tissue surface (n = 365 (penis), 554 (clitoris) and 130 (digit) corpuscles). Data are median ± quartiles. Analysis using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc multiple-comparison test showed an effect of tissue type (F2,1,046 = 151.2, P < 0.0001); ****P < 0.0001. j, Example heat map of corpuscle density across a clitoris, penis and digit. Heat maps are normalized equally across the tissue types to the densest region of the clitoris. k, The ratio of the number of corpuscles located in the proximal half of the glans penis to that in the distal half. l, Example of a Krause corpuscle adjacent to expanded cavernous space (dotted lines) in a penis fixed in the erect state and stained as in b. Scale bars, 200 µm (j) and 50 µm (b, c, e, f and l). D, distal; P, proximal. For g, h and k, data are mean ± s.d. The diagrams in a and d were created by G. Park.