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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Sep 21.
Published in final edited form as: Front Ophthalmol (Lausanne). 2022 Apr 27;2:873486. doi: 10.3389/fopht.2022.873486

Figure 5. Effect of a cytokine cocktail on GFP intensity, MEC size and contractile protein expression.

Figure 5.

Lacrimal gland myoepithelial cells were treated for 7 days with 3 cytokines, IL-1β, TNF-α and IFN-γ, 10 ng/ml each. (A) Representative images of MEC at day 7 following cytokine treatment showing a decrease in GFP intensity. Scale bar = 50 μm. The graph next to the images shows a statistically significant decrease in GFP intensity in treated MEC compared with the control (P = 0.002; Mann-Whitney U test). Data are means ± SD, n=15-16 from 4 repeated experiments. (B) Representative images of MEC area measurements at day 7 following cytokine treatment showing a decrease in cell size. Scale bar = 50 μm. The graph next to the images shows a statistically significant decrease of MEC size in cytokine treated compared with the control (P < 0.001; Student’s t-test; data are means ± SD, n=13-14 from 4 independent experiments). (C) Graphs showing the amount of alpha smooth muscle actin (SMA) and calponin from MEC lysates treated with cytokines for 7 days compared with the control. The amount of both proteins tends to decrease, although not statistically significant (Mann-Whitney U test), in MEC treated with cytokines compared with the control. Data are means ± SD, n = 4.