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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Sep 18.
Published in final edited form as: Soft Matter. 2019 Sep 18;15(36):7203–7210. doi: 10.1039/c9sm00733d

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Substrate-stiffness and colony size dependent dispersion of HCT-8 cell colonies. (a1-a3) HCT-8 cell colonies on 2.6 kPa gels at day 4, day 7 and day 14 of culture. HCT-8 colonies remained cohesive without dispersion throughout the culture period of two weeks. (b1-b3) HCT-8 cell colonies on 20.7 kPa gels at day 4, day 7 and day 14 of culture. (b1) HCT-8 cells at day 4 of culture on the 20.7 kPa gel. HCT-8 cells formed isolated cell colonies of different sizes and morphologies. (b2) HCT-8 cells at day 7 of culture on the 20.7 kPa gel. Cells at the periphery of one of the cell colonies dispersed from their mother colony, as indicated by the arrows. (b3) HCT-8 cells at two weeks of culture on the 20.7 kPa gel. All the colonies dispersed into individual cells. (c1-c3) HCT-8 cell colonies on 47.1 kPa gels at day 4, day 7 and day 14 of culture. HCT-8 cells exhibited similar dispersion behavior as seen on 20.7 kPa gels. (d) Dispersion kinetics of HCT-8 colonies on the 20.7 and 47.1 kPa gels. Dispersion kinetics is colony size dependent as well as gel stiffness dependent. Scale bar: 50 μm. Two-way ANOVA (α=0.05) with Tukey’s post-hoc test was employed for analysis. Error bars denote standard error of the mean. Any two groups with a common letter are not significantly different, while any two groups without a common letter are significantly different.