Fig. 5

Phosphorylation of ERK1/2 under cLIUS. a Western blots depicting protein expression of phosphorylated ERK1/2 (p-ERK) and total ERK1/2 (t-ERK). 2D cultures of MSCs were grown in the presence or absence of inhibitors of MEK/ERK1/2 (PD98059), integrin (GRGDSP), or TRPV4 (RN1734) separately (n = 3), followed by exposure to cLIUS at 14 kPa (5 MHz, 2.5 Vpp) for 5 min. MSCs were lysed, total protein was extracted, and western blots were developed after SDS-PAGE. Non-cLIUS-stimulated MSCs served as respective controls (n = 3). b Quantification of bands observed in western blot by ImageJ (n = 3). Data are shown as the mean ± standard deviation of samples in triplicate. The p value represents a statistical significance and n.s. represents the non-significant difference (Welch’s test). Western blots were cropped for clarity and to exclude redundant adjacent lanes. Uncropped western blots are provided in supplementary files