Figure 7.

The present study identifies how substrate stiffness and cell-cell adhesion affect epithelial morphology, gene expression, and motility. Specifically, for morphology, we found that both factors are able to mask the influence of each other, requiring reduction of both substrate moduli and intercellular interactions for significant morphological change (AND). For motility, however, modulation of both factors was able to induce increases in cell mean velocity (OR). Lastly, SERPINE1 specifically was found to be consistently downregulated on soft substrates, suggesting that the intercellular adhesions are not as influential on SERPINE1 expression as the substrate.