Morphologic changes induced in the cocultured cells by exposing the EC side of the coculture to a shear stress of 12 dyne/cm2 for 24 hours.
(A) SMCs in coculture tend to orient perpendicularly to the flow direction. The photographs labeled 0 hours and 24 hours show the SMCs before and after shear flow, respectively. (B) A typical polar representation of the quantitative analysis of SMC reorientation. Cocultured cells were photographed in the preshear condition and after 24 hours of shear stress (12 dyne/cm2) application to the EC side, and the SMC orientation was analyzed quantitatively as described in “Materials and methods.” Cell orientation is defined as the angle between the direction of the major axis of the ellipse that best fits the boundary of the cells and the flow direction. Data represent the cell numbers at 10-degree intervals as percentages of total cell number in the images. Inverted open triangles (▿) connected by dashed lines represent the data before shear flow. Solid circles (●) connected by solid lines represent the data obtained after 24 hours of shear flow. Note the relatively random distribution of cell angle before flow and the increase in cell alignment perpendicular to flow direction after 24 hours of shearing. The percentages of cells (%) are shown in the radial axes.
