Fig 7. Inter-cellular synchronization of acinar cells.

(A) Functional network of acinar cells extracted from coactivity and overlayed over a corresponding confocal image. Nodes denote individual acinar cells, colors code individual acini (matching the colors in panel B), and connections represent functional associations between synchronized cells, i.e., connections were established if the coactivity coefficient exceeded 0.65). Scale bar 10 μm. (B) Raster plot of binarized activity of all acinar cells in the field of view of a tissue slice during stimulation with 50 nM ACh. White color indicates no activity, other colors represent states with elevated [Ca²⁺]_i in particular cells, whereby colors denote individual acini. (C) Visualized coactivity between three different cells, whereby two of them were located in the same acinus (green line) and the third cell belonged to a separate acinus (yellow). The grey shaded areas indicate the duration of [Ca²⁺]_i oscillations of individual cells and the dashed and dotted lines the degree of coactivity (i.e., overlap in activity) between the two cells displayed in green and the middle green and yellow cell, respectively. (D) Dose-dependent average coactivity between acinar cells within individual acini. (E) Pooled data for low (5–25 nM), medium (50–100 nM), and high (250–1000 nM) ACh concentrations. Boxes determinate the interval within the 25th and the 75th percentile, whiskers denote the minimal and the maximal values, lines within the boxes indicate the median and small squares stand for the average value. Significant difference is indicted by asterisk (*, p<0.05).