Fig. 2

Cell survival in BATs after one week of maturation without load and another week with cyclic elongation at overload conditions (mean 8%) or physiological load (mean 4%) as well as unloaded controls and tension-released BATs. Three BATs of each treatment were stained with calcein AM (green fluorescent, viable cells) and ethidium homodimer-1 (red fluorescent, dead cells) to distinguish green live and red dead cells via fluorescence microscopy. There was no obvious difference in the ratio of live to dead cells among the treatments and most cells were alive. Only cells in tension-released BATs showed a lower ratio of live to dead cells compared to loaded or control BATs