Figure 6.

Hypoxia-mediated endothelial cell attachment correlates with increased HS proteoglycan expression. (A) RPE were seeded as described above and 50 mM sodium chlorate was added to the cell culture medium immediately prior to the onset of hypoxia. After 72 h, RECs were seeded onto the RPE cell layer and allowed to attach for 1 h and the counted (4 fields/well; 3 wells/condition; n = 4; N = 3). The data is expressed as the average number of cells per field ±SEM. (B) RPE cells were maintained under hypoxic (1% pO₂) or normoxic (20% pO₂) conditions for 72 h prior to total RNA extraction and mRNA quantitation using qPCR analyses. The data is normalized to the 18S RNA and to the normoxic control for each condition. The data is expressed as the average ±SEM (N = 4; n = 2). Hypoxia significantly increased REC attachment to RPE cells and chlorate caused a significant (p < 0.05) reduction in REC attachment to hypoxic cells, and hypoxia significantly increased expression of Hs6st1 and Syn1.