Model-based Traction Force Microscopy Reveals Differential Tension in Cellular Actin Bundles
Fig 5
Statistical distribution of stress fiber tensions in U2OS-cells.
(A) Histogram of single stress fiber tension values sorted by fiber types (16 U2OS-cells, N = 369 SFs). All three segmented types show a broad distribution due to biological variability, but VSFs are on average under the highest tension. (B) The statistical significance of the different distributions is verified by performing a consistency check in which the distributions are scrambled. We swap the distributions for the tensions of dorsal and ventral SFs (the tension distribution for transverse arcs is left unchanged) and then assign new tension values for a specific cell by drawing from these distributions. Because the new tension values are generated by random, none of them is as good as the optimal set (dashed line). However, repeated simulation with matching distributions (green) lead to significantly better error estimate values than using a swap of DSF and VSF distributions (blue).