Figure 3.

Epithelial cell behaviour in the acoustic bioreactor. Monodisperse suspensions of 10 µm polystyrene beads (a) or 16HBE cells (a–e) were introduced into the acoustic bioreactor and levitated for 24 h in the absence (c-e as indicated) or presence of Ca²⁺ (a–e as indicated); images were captured by time lapse microscopy and the resultant agglomerates were analysed and expressed as % of starting area (i.e. normalised to t = 0 h). Data are mean ± SD, n = 3 (a,c,d) or are representative images obtained by fluorescent microscopy for F-actin (magenta) and nuclei (blue) (b) or phase-contrast microscopy (e) (n = 3) of cells after levitation and removal from the bioreactor. Scale bars are 15 µm (b) and 250 µm (e) respectively. ***P ≤ 0.001 for comparison between 0 and 24 h and ⁺⁺P ≤ 0.01 and ⁺⁺⁺P ≤ 0.001 at 24 h compared to beads (a) or without calcium (d) (two-way ANOVA with Sidak’s correction for multiple comparisons).