Fig. S1.

Soft Ecad-Fc PA gels do not support MDCK cell adhesion and spreading. (A) Representative images of MDCK cells fixed and stained with phalloidin attached to Ecad-Fc PA gels with elastic moduli ∼1* kPa and 9 kPa. (B) Bar graph represents the percentage of seeded cells that adhered to 1*-kPa and 9-kPa Ecad-Fc PA gels averaged from three independent experiments. Error bars represent SEM. (C–E) Quantification of morphological features, including area (C), aspect ratio (D), and circularity (E). Cumulative data from three independent experiments are represented in a dot plot, where each dot represents one cell. The solid black line indicates the median and the upper and lower bars represent the interquartile range (n ≥ 15 cells per condition). *As indicated in Table S1, a gel formulation of 3.1%T, 3.22%C with a predicted elastic modulus of ∼1 kPa was used for these studies. However, the elastic modulus could not be confirmed by AFM due to the probe sticking to the gel.