Figure 1
From: Mechanical loading induces primary cilia disassembly in tendon cells via TGFβ and HDAC6
Isolated tenocytes express elongated cilia without any predominate orientation in contrast to that seen in tendon. (a) Representative confocal images showing tenocyte primary cilia and nuclei in situ within rat tail tendon fascicles (left) and in isolated human cells cultured in monolayer (right) at 2 different scales. The cell nuclei are labelled with Dapi (blue) and cilia are immunolabelled for acetylated α-tubulin (red). In addition, cilia in isolated tenocytes have been immunolabelled for the ciliary membrane protein ARL13b (green). Scale bars represent 10 μm. (b) Rose plots showing that the orientation of tenocyte primary cilia is parallel to the long axis of the corresponding nucleus in situ within tendon tissue (left) but that there is a lack of any predominant relative orientation in isolated tenocytes (right). (c) Box and whisker plot showing nuclear aspect ratio indicating that nuclei in isolated human tenocytes are significantly rounder than those in situ in rat tail tendon fascicles. (d) Box and whisker plot showing longer primary cilia in isolated human tenocytes compared to in situ in rat tail tendon fascicles. N = 120 ± 20 cells and 60 ± 20 cilia per group. For tendon fascicles cilia were imaged from fascicles from 3 rats. For isolated cells images were from 3 donors. All statistically significant differences based on 2 tailed unpaired student’s t-tests are indicated with p < 0.001 represented by ###.
