FIG. 2.

Multiparameter screening of ECM attributes reveals that fiber alignment strongly dictates the cell's aspect ratio and orientation. (a) Representative 3T3 fibroblasts seeded on selected Fn-patterns (red) stained for F-actin (green) and nuclei (blue) with phalloidin-AlexaFluor488 and Hoechst33342, respectively (scale bar: 50 μm). (b) Schematic indicating how the cell aspect ratio and orientation were quantified. (c) Cell aspect ratio as a function of line width (left), line density (middle), and line angular dispersion (right). Data are presented as violin plots demonstrating distribution with overlaid box plots. (d) Histograms of cell major axis orientation with respect to the pattern axis as a function of line width (left), line density (middle), and line angular dispersion (right) (n ≥ 400 cells per condition, total of 2938 cells analyzed).