Figure 2.

(a) Representative contact-mode imaging of a portion of BM isolated from a low-matured (day 12) BM in ultrapure water and (b) imaging of the same portion in air, after dehydration. The black background is the glass coverslip. (c) The surface topography of an inner portion of a hydrated and (d) dehydrated BM, respectively. (e) The decrease in mean BM thickness of low-matured membranes after dehydration and (f) age-dependent increase in BM thickness between low- and highly matured MCF10A acini. The distributions represent mean and full width at half-maximum of the Gaussian distributions used for fitting the height histograms of single AFM images. The horizontal dotted lines represent average values of the distributions’ centers.