Fig. 2: FAKI-mediated inhibition of mechanotransduction in wounds of large organisms promotes a regenerative organization of collagen fiber networks.

a Picrosirius Red staining of postoperative day 90 standard wounds (W, gray, n = 9 independent wounds), blank pullulan-collagen hydrogels treated wounds (W_H, blue, n = 9 independent wounds), or FAKI-releasing hydrogel treated wounds (W_HF, red, n = 7 independent wounds) was quantified and compared to unwounded skin (UW, purple, n = 6 independent skin samples) using alignment (CurveAlign, second column), fiber length metrics (MatFiber, middle two columns), and CT-Fire (right two columns). Scale bar: 10 µm. b Quantification of the different collagen fiber network characteristics, alignment (****p = 0.0001), fiber length (*p = 0.0494), box density (***p = 0.0006; *p = 0.0275), feature number (*p = 0.0196), and angle kurtosis (*p = 0.0394) across the four different groups. c Principal component analysis (PCA) plots showing the variance explained by the first three principal components (PCs); PC1 explains 61.7% of the variance, PC2 explains 11.6%, and PC3 explains 8.2%. Statistical comparisons were made using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Tukey’s multiple comparisons tests. Each datapoint represents an independent wound. All data represent mean ± SEM. Representative images are shown from similar images across all wounds.