Fig. 7

Pcdh18a affects cell sorting. Red and green labeled cells were mixed and allowed to aggregate (see Materials and methods). Control cells aggregated uniformly (A–C, G, H, K). When red cells injected with pcdh18a 5′ UTR-MO were mixed with green cells injected with pcdh18a RNA, aggregates were less uniform with green cells tending to cluster (D–F, I, J, M). To make a quantitative presentation of the effect, we traced the areas occupied by red and green cells in the same aggregate for each of 30 control or experimental aggregates (illustrated in G–J; K, M are merged images), using the “Northern Eclipse” program from Empix Imaging, Inc. (http://empix.com/). The ratios are displayed using the online program (http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/t-test.html) and Microsoft office Excel (L). Panel L shows the control ratios on line A (0.93 ± 0.11) and experimental ratios on line B (0.42 ± 0.15); the difference is highly significant (1.00E- 21 by the two tailed t-test). Scale bar is 100 μm as shown for panels A–F in panel A, and for panels G–J, K, M in panel G.