Figure 6: Presence of binucleated luminal cells in lactating mammary tissue from different mammalian species.
From: Essential role for a novel population of binucleated mammary epithelial cells in lactation
(a) Whole-mount 3D confocal image of a ductal portion from paraffin-embedded (PE) mammary tissue from a late-pregnant cow (n=3). (b) Whole-mount 3D confocal image of a ductal portion from PE lactating mammary tissue from a wallaby (n=3). (c) Whole-mount 3D confocal image of a ductal portion from PE lactating mammary tissue from seal (n=3). (d) Whole-mount 3D confocal image of a ductal tree from fresh human lactating breast tissue (n=5). For each species, the depicted image is from the selected area shown in Supplementary Fig. 10a–d. The cow, seal and wallaby whole-mounts were labelled for Keratin 5 (red), β-catenin (green) and DAPI (white), whereas human tissue was stained for E-cadherin (red), F-actin (green) and DAPI (white). In the right panels, nuclei in binucleated cells within the middle panels are depicted schematically as orange dots. Scale bars: 20 μm (whole-mounts); and 10 μm (optical sections). (e) Bar graph showing per cent of binucleated and mononucleated cells in alveoli (n=3–5 samples). More than 20 alveoli (>1,000 cells) were counted for each species. Error bars represent mean±s.e.m.
