Figure 4
The contractile moment of a two-ASM cell ensemble is compared to that of a theoretical two-cell pair which does not form adherens (cell-cell) junctions. At E = 300 Pa, (healthy ECM), the theoretical pair of two ASM cells with no cell-cell connections has statistically higher contractile moment than the two-cell pairs which form cell-cell borders (p < 0.05, N = 8, Tukey test). At E = 13 kPa, the difference in contractile moment between the experimental two-cell pair and the theoretical pair is no longer statistically significant (p = 0.379, N = 8, Tukey test). The net contractile moment of the experimental two-cell ensemble does increase significantly with increase in ECM stiffness from E = 300 Pa to E = 13 kPa (N = 8, Tukey test, p < 0.05). Data is presented as a box-whisker plot. The box represents the 25, 50 (median) and 75 percentiles of the contractile moments. The whiskers represent the min and max of the contractile moments.
