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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Feb 14.
Published in final edited form as: Lab Chip. 2017 Feb 14;17(4):727–737. doi: 10.1039/c6lc01444e

Figure 1. Synthetic PEG-based hydrogel for microniche formation.

Figure 1

8-arm PEG were functionalized with two kinds of pending linker peptides to create TG-PEG polymer precursors. Amino acids in red denote complimentary transglutaminase factor XIII (FXIII) substrate sequences. Amino acids in bold denote a matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) sensitive sequence. TG-PEG precursors are crosslinked by FXIII in a calcium dependent manner to form a covalently crosslinked synthetic matrix (TG-PEG hydrogel) that can be degraded by cell-secreted MMPs (scissors). Peptides containing amino acids serving as integrin binding site (RGD) adjacent to a FXIII substrate sequence are admixed to the reaction mixture to introduce cell adhesion sites.