Figure 2.

Tissue-engineered muscle construct culture and optimization. Muscle constructs were created by flow-alignment of C2C12 myoblasts at 10E6 cells/mL (a,b) or 10E7 cells/mL (c,d) within type I collagen oligomer matrices prepared at 200Pa (a,c) and 1000Pa (b,d). A. Constructs were cultured within a custom culture device for 14 days under passive tension. B. Confocal images (100μm thickness) of 14-day constructs stained with phalloidin (F-actin; red) and Draq5 (nucleus, green) show more extensive myotube formation (white arrows) for constructs prepared at high cell densities (10E7 cells/mL) within low stiffness matrices (200Pa). Scale bar=50μm