Figure 3: Vestibular hair cell stereocilia incorporate actin only in the distal tip compartment. | Nature Communications

Figure 3: Vestibular hair cell stereocilia incorporate actin only in the distal tip compartment.

From: Length regulation of mechanosensitive stereocilia depends on very slow actin dynamics and filament-severing proteins

Figure 3

(a) One week. β-actin-GFP in green and F-actin stained with phalloidin in red. (b) Greyscale image of β-actin-GFP. β-Actin-GFP was incorporated in a small compartment at the tips of utricular hair cell stereocilia (examples indicated by white arrows). Yellow arrow indicates a cell that apparently lacked phalloidin-stained stereocilia but expressed β-actin-GFP. (c) Twenty weeks. β-Actin-GFP (green) and F-actin (red). (d) Greyscale image of β-actin-GFP. In most cells, β-actin-GFP incorporation remained restricted to stereocilia tips (examples indicated by white arrows). Other cells had a short bundle of stereocilia that contained β-actin-GFP along their length (yellow arrow), likely representing nascent bundles that developed in the 20 weeks following the start of β-actin-GFP expression. Occasionally, individual stereocilia in a bundle developed a longer zone containing β-actin-GFP (blue arrowhead), while other stereocilia in the same bundle had β-actin-GFP localization restricted to tips. Scale bar, 5 μm.

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