Fig. 7.

Contractile performances of two cells in a longitudinally connected cell-cell doublet (a) before and (b) after a gap junction blocker was applied. (c) Statistics showing the effect of the gap junction blocker on cell contractility. Cell contractility was determined from three independent experiments, and expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Both cells exhibited discernible contraction before the blockage of gap junction, while the un-stimulated cell no longer exhibited periodical length change after the gap junction was blocked.