Fig. 6.

Effects of calpain inhibitor I on cyclic stretch-induced p120 loss and gap formation. MLE-12 cells were pretreated with calpain inhibitor I (Capn I, 150 μM) for 15 min and then exposed to cyclic stretch (20%) for 2h. A: effect of calpain inhibitor I on stretch-induced p120 protein expression. p120 protein expression was determined by Western blot analysis. CON, control. B: after fixation and permeabilization, cells were incubated with anti-p120-catenin primary antibody followed by Alexa-conjugated secondary antibody (green). The F-actin and nucleus were stained with Alexa 546 phalloidin (red) and DAPI (blue), respectively. Scale bars = 5 μm. C: quantitative analysis of cyclic stretch-induced gap formation in alveolar epithelial cells was performed as described in materials and methods. Shown are representative results of 5 independent experiments. *P < 0.05 vs. control group (static). †P < 0.05 vs. DMSO group.