Fig. 3: Core-shell microgels for cell culture.
From: Bioprinting microporous functional living materials from protein-based core-shell microgels
Left panel: GFP Escherichia Coli (E. coli.) in core-shell and non-core-shell microgels. Right panel: formation and characterization of HEK 293 T cellular spheroids in core-shell microgels. a Proliferation of GFP E. coli. in the core-shell microgels. Cell growth is confined inside the viscous microgel cores. b Proliferation of E. coli. in the non-core-shell microgels. E. coli proliferate locally to form visible microcolonies. Blue and white dashed lines outline the microgels and the CMC cores, respectively. c Schematic representation of the formation of multicellular spheroids. Due to spatial confinement, cells are allowed to interact in all three dimensions to form multicellular spheroids featuring a hierarchical structure. d Growth of HEK 293 T spheroids from day 3 to day 6, quantified by spheroid circularity and area. Data are represented as mean values with minimums/maximums, n = 107 spheroids (day 3), n = 248 spheroids (day 6) in the same experiment. **p = 0.0019, ****p < 1E-15, unpaired two-tailed student’s t test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. e Live/Dead staining of cell-laden microgels at day 0, day 3, and day 6. Live cells (green) and dead cells (red) are stained with calcein acetoxymethyl (calcein AM) and ethidium homodimer-1 (EthD-1), respectively. f Cytoskeletal structure of HEK 293 T spheroids. (i) Brightfield image of a HEK 293 T spheroid and (ii) its confocal microscopic image. (iii) Cytoskeletal structure of HEK 293 T from monolayer culture. F-actin and nuclei are stained with phalloidin and 4’, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI), respectively. Confocal fluorescent micrograph is rendered from cross-sectional images at different vertical positions (Supplementary Fig. 10).
