Figure 1.

The distribution of epithelial and subepithelial DC populations. Bronchial whole-mount preparations from CD11c-EYFP mice were stained for MHC-II and subsequently labeled with phalloidin–Alexa 680 to simultaneously visualize EYFP⁺ cells (yellow) and MHC-II⁺ cells (red) in relation to the epithelium and smooth muscle layer (gray) using confocal microscopy. A: Confocal Z-stack is shown as a Y-projection side view to demonstrate the distinction of epithelial and subepithelial compartments of the airway mucosa (separated by white dashed line) (left), and the graph shows the number of CD11c-EYFP⁺ cells beneath an area of 1-mm² airway epithelium (right). Cell count was determined at the proximal part of the left main axial pathway from five mice. B: Confocal Z-projections top views of the optical sections generated within the epithelial (upper panels) and subepithelial layer (lower panels) of the same confocal Z-stack showing the distribution of CD11c-EYFP⁺ and MHC-II⁺ cells. Scale bar = 50 μm.