Figure 6: Wnt7a-CT demonstrates increased dispersion compared with Wnt7a-FL.

(a) Fibres surrounding a single fibre electroporated with a Wnt7a-CT expression plasmid show larger minimal fibre ferets at the second and third order when compared with fibres surrounding a single fibre electroporated with a Wnt7a-FL expression plasmid, the fibre feret was normalized to control electroporated fibres. n=4, ***P<0.001, *P<0.05. (b) Schematic showing the evaluation of fibre feret following electroporation of Wnt7a-CT or Wnt7a-FL. The electroporated fibre (marked by the expression of HA) is depicted in yellow. (c) COS cells transfected with a Wnt7a-CT expression plasmid show increased ratio of secreted protein to intracellular protein compared with Wnt7a-FL. Antibodies against HA were used to detect the truncated and full-length variant. (d) Transwell assay culturing COS cells either expressing Wnt7a-CT or Wnt7a-FL in the upper compartment and differentiating C2C12 cells on the lower compartment. Only C2C12 cells exposed to the supernatant from COS cells expressing the Wnt7a-CT variant demonstrate hypertrophy, n=4, **P<0.01. (e) Differentiated C2C12 cells exposed to the supernatant from COS cells using a transwell assay show increased amounts of phosphorylated (activated) S6 and AKT. All P-values were calculated using a two-tailed Student’s t-test. All data are expressed as mean±s.e.m.