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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2024 Aug 5.
Published in final edited form as: Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2023 Jul 21;35(11):e14646. doi: 10.1111/nmo.14646

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

(A) Schematic illustration of the layers of the distal colon smooth muscle (m.) with Interstitial Cells of Cajal (ICC) depicted in green. The mucosa and submucosa, including the multipolar ICC (ICC-SM) are removed for immunohistochemical processing. Intramuscular ICC are primarily bipolar and are distributed along the axis of the smooth muscle cells throughout circular muscle (ICC-CM) and perpendicularly-oriented longitudinal muscle (ICC-LM). The cells of the myenteric plexus (ICC-MP) are multipolar with numerous secondary and tertiary cytoplasmic branching. (B) Single z-stack image of DIC channel highlighting smooth muscle fiber orientation of the circular muscle at that plane of focus (white arrowheads) upon which intensity threshold-isolated ICC-CM visualized from the corresponding FITC channel have been superimposed to illustrate orientation. (C) Similar processing of the DIC channel to highlight the perpendicularly oriented longitudinal smooth muscle (arrowheads) and ICC-LM. Representative original c-Kit fluorescent image of isolated (D) ICC-CM; (E) ICC-MP; and (F) ICC-LM as visualized for quantitative analysis. Images are 40×; calibration bar = 50 μm.