Machine learning reveals mesenchymal breast carcinoma cell adaptation in response to matrix stiffness
Fig 6
Changes in expression of biomarkers associated with epithelial and mesenchymal phenotypes.
(a-c) Mean fluorescent signal from E-cadherin, vimentin, and cytokeratins, respectively, across substrates of different stiffness. (d) The ratio of fluorescence intensity of cytokeratins to vimentin (CVR) calculated for all stiffness values. For (a-d) values are mean, error bars indicate standard deviation. Orange line shows the mean values and the band indicates 95% confidence intervals. Significance of the difference assessed by Welch’s t-test (‘***’: p < 0.001, ‘**’: p < 0.01, ‘*’: p < 0.05), n = number of cells, see Table A in S2 Text. (e) Box plots comparing mean fluorescent signal from E-cadherin, cytokeratins, and vimentin in cells belonging to three cell morphs. There appears to be no difference in CVR between the three cell morphs as can be seen in the rightmost plot. Distributions of the values are reported using box plots: a box shows the median value, first and third quartiles, whiskers indicate median +/-1.5 * IQR. Significance of the difference assessed by Welch’s t-test (‘***’: p < 0.001, ‘**’: p < 0.01, ‘*’: p < 0.05).