Figure 2.

Substrate stiffness affected morphological distribution of SCs in vitro. (a) Maximum projection confocal micrographs of representative SCs exhibiting unpolarized, bipolar and multipolar morphologies (bottom to top) stained with phalloidin for actin, and TO-PRO-3 iodide for nuclei. Scale bar represents 20 µm. (b) Bar plot of the percentage occurrence of unpolarized (black), bipolar (grey) and multipolar (white) morphology occurrence per stiffness shows that the bipolar phenotype is most prevalent across all elastic moduli; 0.24 (n = 298), 1.70 (n = 382) and 4.80 kPa (n = 156). (Online version in colour.)