FIG. 4.

Morphological verifications by commercial transwell system. The MDCKs monolayers were formed on the upper surface of the permeable membrane insert. The CG-ASC was polymerized in the lower compartment of a six-well plate (ASC-LC) or on the bottom of the permeable membrane (ASC-BM) (A). However, the commercial transwell cannot observe the cell morphology when acquiring the DIC images. The quantitative analysis for measuring the thickness of cell junction can only be performed in fixed cells from Z-stack images after immunostaining (B). The thickening of cell–cell junction in MDCKs was confirmed by immunofluorescent staining of β-catenin when coculture in both ASC-LC and ASC-BM conditions. *Significant difference (p<0.05) from culture only MDCKs.