Figure 5
(A) shows the experimental setup used to measure the Young’s modulus of airway ECM. Each airway segment (labeled 2/photograph shown) was threaded through a triangular piece of stainless-steel wire. The tissue is stretched using a lever arm (labeled 1) and the force generated was measured using a force transducer (labeled 3). (B) The force-length curve measured for a small airway (C) the corresponding stress-strain curve. (D) For airways with E ≤ 2 kPa, the stiffness of the ECM appears to show a dependence on inner diameter of the airway, with smaller airways having lower values of ECM stiffness than larger airways. The dotted line is a linear regression with an R2 of 0.61. The P-value indicates that the slope is significantly different from zero.
