Figure 6. Yap controls utricular growth in organotypic bubble cultures.

(A) A schematic representation of an experiment on an organotypic bubble culture shows the time at which the utricles are transfected with virus expressing GFP or GFP-YTIP and the duration of EdU labeling. (B) Sox2 antiserum (red) labels the sensory epithelia of whole-mount preparations of utricular bubbles infected with virus expressing GFP or GFP-YTIP. As demonstrated by the incorporation of EdU (white), supporting cells in E17.5 utricles in GFP virus-infected cultures, but not in GFP-YTIP virus-infected cultures, re-enter the cell cycle. GFP, which demonstrates infected cells, is shown in green. The scale bar represents 100 μm. (C) The area of the sensory epithelia and (D) the number of EdU-positive cells in GFP virus-infected controls are increased significantly as compared to GFP-YTIP virus-infected utricles (means ± SEMs; area p<0.001; cell number p<0.05; N = 4 for GFP and N = 3 for GFP-YTIP; Figure 6—source data 1 and 2). (E) The extent of proliferation is inversely correlated with supporting-cell density, which is significantly decreased in GFP virus-infected controls as compared to GFP-YTIP virus-infected utricles (means ± SEMs; p<0.05; N = 5 for GFP and N = 6 for GFP-YTIP; Figure 6—source data 3).

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25681.033