Fig. 7.

Spreading and orientation of RFP-hMSC cells during cyclic stretching (A) Micrographs of cells (n ≥ 300 per time point) in the micropillar arrays after cyclic stretching. The double-sided arrows at the bottom indicated the stretching directions. Live cells tagged with RFP (red fluorescence) were detected via fluorescence mode, and micropillar arrays were observed in phase-contrast mode; shown are the merged images. (B) Apparent spreading fraction and orientational order parameter of cells as functions of stretching time. The red lines in (B) are just for the guidance of view. (C) Schematic presentation of cells in the indicated 2D or quasi-3D material microenvironments under cyclic stretching. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)