Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: StrataChip: a microphysiological system capturing dynamic keratinocyte fate and mechanical transitions during human epidermal morphogenesis

doi: 10.64898/2026.03.26.714483

Figure Lengend Snippet: (a) Fluorescence micrographs showing the epidermis developmental timeline in orthogonal slices at day 2, day 5 and day 7. Visualized with phalloidin f-actin stain in orange. (b) Bar graph of the average epidermal thickness. N = 15 independent devices. (c) Representative illustration of epidermis with colors representing expression of differentiation markers in basal cells (BC), spinous cells (SC) and granular cells (GC) within epidermal layers: Magenta-Keratin 14 (K14), Green-Keratin 10 (K10), Orange-Involucrin (IVL). (d) Orthogonal slice fluorescence micrograph of StrataChip epidermis at day 7 immunostained with differentiation markers: KRT14 (left), KRT10 (left and right), and IVL (right), as well as DNA stain DAPI. (e) Quantification of the layer-specific expression for epidermal differentiation markers KRT14, KRT10, and IVL. N ≥ 4 for each marker. (f) Orthogonal slice fluorescence micrograph of epidermis immunostained for p63. Dashed line represents cell-ECM boundary. (g) Flowchart of epidermal tissue dissociation, single-cell RNA-sequencing, and analysis. ( h) Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) plot of cell types identified in StrataChip tissues. (i) Expression UMAP with representative gene expression for each layer-specific cell type. Dark to light pink indicates high to low gene expression. (j) Dot plot showing representative gene expression for each cell type in StrataChip tissues. (k) Three representative gene ontology (GO) terms for each keratinocyte category. All scale bars, 20 µm.

Article Snippet: Antibody against p63 (D9L7L, 1:400 IF) was from Cell signaling Technology.

Techniques: Fluorescence, Staining, Expressing, Marker, Single Cell, RNA Sequencing, Gene Expression