Figure 3.

Effects of pharmacological inhibitors on the mechanical behavior of cerebral walls and apical surface. (A) Photomicrographs showing apical bending/curling of E13 mouse cerebral wall slices exposed to DMSO, blebbistatin, Y-27632, or nocodazole. Note that blebbistatin and Y-27632 clearly blocked bending/curling, and also that nocodazole laterally expanded and thinned cerebral walls, making bending/curling less evident. (B) Observation of sparsely DiI-labeled three progenitor cells (a-c) in slices treated with DMSO or nocodazole. In the nocodazole-treated slice, thinning and lateral expansion of cerebral wall was coupled with separation between the tracked progenitors. (C) Live monitoring of the apical junction mesh using R26-ZO1-EGFP mice. In each set of panels, one endfoot was used as a reference (center, asterisk). While the size of meshes and the distance between meshes did not change in cerebral walls treated with blebbistatin or Y-27632, the nocodazole-treated apical surface showed enlargement of meshes and lateral separation between meshes. Scale bar, 200 μm in (A), 50 μm in (B), 5 μm in (C).