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. 2006 Aug 18;91(10):3907–3920. doi: 10.1529/biophysj.106.084806

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

Force generation involves NMM-IIA. (A) Cell lysates from six cell lines were subjected to Western blotting for NMM-IIA, NMM-IIB, vinculin, and β-actin. The RPTP-C6 and NIH3T3-C4 cells containing the NMM-IIA siRNA expression plasmid have lower expression levels of NMM-IIA than their respective control cells. RPTP-control-1 and NIH3T3-control-1 were untransfected control cells. RPTP-control-2 (designated as RPTP-control in other experiments) and NIH3T3-control-2 (designated as NIH3T3-control in other experiments) were cells transfected with a control siRNA plasmid. (B) A representative bright-field image of living cells spreading on arrays of 10 μg/ml fibronectin-coated micro-posts (1 μm in diameter and 2 μm center-to-center) in the presence of serum for 90 min at 37°C. Each bright spot represents the tip of a post. Posts covered by the cell are within the green circles automatically generated by a custom multiple-particle tracking program (see Materials and Methods for details). Cells pulled posts inward along the cell edge. Scale bar, 10 μm. Inset is a higher magnification view of posts boxed in the red square. (C) Western blot analysis of lysates of NMM-IIB−/−_IIAKD and NMM-IIB−/− cells (with control plasmid), showing that NMM-IIA expression is suppressed in NMM-IIB−/−_IIAKD cells.