Figure 6. Adhesion of retinal astrocytes to extracellular matrix proteins

Adhesion of wild-type and TSP1^-/- RAC to vitronectin (A) or fibronectin (B) was determined as described in Methods. Briefly, cells were plated on wells coated with different concentration of vitronectin or fibronectin and allowed to adhere for 90 min. Non-adherent cells were removed by rinsing the wells. The number of adherent cells was determined by measuring intracellular phosphatase activity utilizing absorbencies at 405 nm. Note TSP1^-/- RAC adhered more strongly to fibronectin and vitronectin compared to wild-type RAC. These experiments were repeated four times with similar results.