Table S1.

AFM Measurements of polyacrylamide gels

Gel formulation	Experiment	Elastic modulus, kPa	SD	n
3.1%T, 3.22%C	1	*	*	*
5.1%T, 2.91%C	1	9.61491	0.2818	25
	2	9.21432	0.6096	26
10%T, 1%C	1	31.75031	0.810869	25
	2	29.32711	2.187512	22
	3	27.54688	0.871303	30
10%T, 2.5%C	1	52.56912	1.264124	26
	2	67.15331	1.7727621	25
	3	57.29712	0.866444	29

Shown are AFM measurements indicating the elastic moduli of the gel formulations used in this study. For sample nomenclature, “%T” indicates the total polymer content, and “%C” indicates the cross-linker concentration used during polymerization. For each experiment, 22–30 total indentations were made in five different regions of the gel to account for any heterogeneity, which resulted in a total of 51 measurements for the “5.1%T, 2.91%C” group, 77 measurements for the “10%T, 1%C” group, and 80 measurements for the “10%T, 2.5%C” group.

^*The gel formulation of “3.1%T, 3.22%C” is expected to have an elastic modulus of ∼1 kPa, but we were unable to determine the elastic modulus of that sample due to the AFM probe sticking to the gel sample.