Figure 11
Substrate rigidity positively regulates cell morphology, migration, traction, and spheroid disaggregation in highly metastatic SKOV3.ip1 cells. SKOV3.ip1 cells were cultured to analyze the following experimental parameters: (A) Cell morphology, as described in Fig. 2 (graph depicts all data points (colored symbols), with box & whisker plots as described earlier; n = 30 cells from 3 experiments for all samples; ****p < 0.0001); (B–D) Traction force, as described in Fig. 4 (n = 20 cells from 3 experiments per condition); ****p < 0.001); (E–G) Cell migration, as described in Fig. 5 (panel (E) shows temporal color-coded tracks of the positions of cell nuclei over time; panel (F) shows mean percent migrating cells (±s.d.; n = 80 cells from 3 experiments; *p = 0.0287; **p = 0.0048); panel (G) shows maximum displacements as box & whisker plots as described earlier (n = 11, 19, and 22 cells from 2 experiments for 3, 25, and 125 kPa samples, respectively; ***p = 0.001; ****p < 0.001)); (H,I) Durotaxis, as described in Fig. 6 (white numbers indicate time in minutes before or after the hydrogel was stretched in the direction indicated by the arrow; n = 7 cells each condition; *p = 0.002); (J,K) Spheroid disaggregation, as described in Fig. 7 (because of the heterogeneous size of SKOV3.ip1 spheroids, the graph in (K) depicts the relative area of each spheroid measured at 2 h and 20 h; n = 10 spheroids for each condition; ***p = 0.007; ****p < 0.001).
