Figure 3.

Nascent proteins physically displace the hydrogel from the cell membrane while proteoglycans interdigitate further within the hydrogel. A) Schematic of hydrogel encapsulated beads to visualize the cell–hydrogel interface. Fluorescent beads (diameter 0.2 μm) are co-encapsulated with chondrocytes and nascent matrix labeling enables visualization and quantification of the cell–hydrogel interface. B) Representative images (magnifications on the right) of accumulated nascent proteins (white, left) and nascent proteoglycans (cyan, right) of chondrocytes co-encapsulated with fluorescent beads (orange) and cultured for up to 7 d (scale bars 10 μm). C) Quantification of the distance of the closest bead per cell for cultures up to 7 d and labeled for nascent proteins (see Figure S4 (Supporting Information) for methodology and Figure S5 (Supporting Information) for bead distance of chondrocytes when labeled for nascent proteoglycans, n = 40 cells per group from two independent biological experiments, mean ± SD, **p ≤ 0.05, ****p ≤ 0.0001, two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc).