Figure 2
Single cells of the three types were patterned in the rectangular geometries listed in Supplementary Table S1 and stretched for 10 min.
Almost all the HUVECs survived the stretch (A). Most of the 3T3 cells maintained good viability, except those with the width of 40 μm and areas larger than 2000 μm2 (B). The viability of C2C12 cells were highly dependent on their geometries (C): almost all the C2C12 cells of 10 μm width survived stretch; given the same areas, thinner cells had higher viability; given the same widths of 20 or 40 μm, smaller cells had higher viability. Reducing the tension of actin cytoskeleton by blebbistatin or Cyto D rescued the C2C12 cells of 40 × 100 (D). The black, grey and white bars represent the geometries of 10, 20 and 40-μm widths respectively. * and **, significant difference (*, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01) between groups; # and ##, significant difference (#, P < 0.05; ##, P < 0.01) from DMSO.
