Fig. 5

Paxillin regulates ECM composition at the MTJ. (A) Immunostaining for Laminin and Vinculin at MTJs at 24 hpf in wild-type, MZpxna, MZpxna;Zpxnb, MZpxnb, Zpxna;MZpxnb and control MO or pxna/b ATG-MO injected wild-type embryos. (B) Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) ratios between Laminin and Vinculin revealed reduced Laminin accumulation at the MTJs of MZpxna;Zpxnb embryos and pxna/b ATG-MO injected embryos at this stage. Data points represent individual embryo means and error bars show standard deviations from three independent experiments. * p<0.05 as determined by Kruskal-Wallis/Dunn's post-hoc test, # # p<0.01 as determined by T-test, ns = not significant. (C) Immunostaining for Fibronectin at MTJs at 32 hpf. Ectopic retention of Fibronectin at MTJs in the majority of MZpxna;Zpxnb embryos was observed (white arrowheads). The number of embryos from three independent experiments with the depicted MTJ phenotypes over the total number of embryos examined for each genotype is noted. (D) Immunostaining for Fibronectin at MTJs at 48 hpf. Similar to MZpxna embryos, Fibronectin gets downregulated at the MTJs in a majority of MZpxna;Zpxnb embryos. Some MZpxna;Zpxnb embryos with severe muscle degeneration exhibit persistent ectopic Fibronectin (white arrowhead). The number of embryos exhibiting each phenotype over the total number of embryos examined from three independent experiments is noted. Boxed areas show regions of interest visualized for each stage. Scale bars =10 µm.