Figure 7.

Trajectory of TrkA-Positive Axons in the Skin Epidermis

(A) Sagittal tissue sections of the hindpaw plantar surface from WT and R3KO animals. The sections were immunostained for NGF and TrkA. The superimposed images show NGF in green and TrkA in magenta. Scale bar, 50 μm.

(B) Trajectory of TrkA-positive axons was represented as “curviness index”—the length of each entire axon segment within the NGF-positive area divided by the straight-line distance between the two ends of that segment. Four pairs of WT and R3KO littermates were analyzed. The indexes of TrkA axons were averaged in each animal and compared between R3KO and its WT littermate. ∗p < 0.05; paired t test.

(C) The curviness indexes of all axons from the four pairs of animals analyzed in (B) were pooled and presented as scatterplots. Each dot corresponds to a single axon segment (n = 397 for WT, n = 478 for R3KO).

See also Figures S3 and S4.