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. 2019 Apr 10;9:5858. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-42415-3

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© The Author(s) 2019

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/.

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Ultrastructural identification of telocytes (TCs) in human tongue muscle interstitium. (A) Semithin sections stained with toluidine blue and observed by light microscopy. Spindle-shaped cells with very long and thin moniliform cytoplasmic processes (arrows) are observed in the stroma surrounding skeletal muscle fibers. (B–D) Tongue muscle ultrathin sections stained with UranyLess and bismuth subnitrate solutions and observed by transmission electron microscopy. TCs (digitally colored in blue) are ultrastructurally identifiable as interstitial cells with telopodes (Tp), namely cytoplasmic prolongations with a moniliform silhouette due to the alternation of thin segments (podomers) and expanded portions (podoms). TCs may display a spindle-shaped, oval or piriform cell body mostly occupied by the nucleus. Telopodes are often interconnecting (B, dashed arrow) and in close relationship with skeletal muscle fibers (C,D). Scale bar: 25 µm (A), 2 µm (B–D).