Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2018 Feb 26;8:3581. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-22067-5

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Morphology of human synovium (sublining layer) under light and transmission electron microscopy. (a,b) Representative photomicrographs of toluidine blue-stained synovial semithin sections. Asterisks denote sublining layer blood vessels. Stromal cells displaying a spindle-shaped or piriform cell body with a large nucleus and very small amount of cytoplasm, and long and thin moniliform cytoplasmic processes are present throughout the synovial sublining, particularly in perivascular locations (arrows; shown at higher magnification in the insets). (c–h) Representative transmission electron microscopy photomicrographs of synovial ultrathin sections stained with uranyl acetate and bismuth subnitrate solutions. Telocytes (TC) and telopodes (Tp) have been digitally colored in blue. Telocytes are ultrastructurally characterized by i) a small cell body mostly occupied by a relatively large nucleus surrounded by scarce cytoplasm containing few mitochondria and cisternae of endoplasmic reticulum and a small Golgi apparatus, and ii) thin moniliform processes (telopodes) with narrow emergence from the cell body and a moniliform aspect (alternating thin segments/podomers and dilated portions/podoms). The nucleus is indented, showing patches of heterochromatin near the nuclear membrane. Podoms accommodate some organelles, such as rough endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria (c, inset). The ultrastructural traits of telocytes make them easily distinguishable from neighboring fibroblasts (Fb), which exhibit a large body rich in cisternae of rough endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria, a large Golgi apparatus and short and thick processes (d). Telocytes and telopodes can be observed throughout the whole synovial sublining layer, either in neutral positions surrounded by abundant collagenous extracellular matrix (c,e), or topographically closely related to fibroblasts (d) and blood vessels (BV) (f–h). Note the presence of telopodes delimiting the basal lamina of microvessels (f–h). Scale bar: 50 µm (a,b), 5 µm (c–h).