Figure 6

The presence of thymocytes do not change inter-TEC GJIC. Mouse TEC co-cultures (IT-76M1 cells) were maintained at 37°C for 2 hrs to establish an adherent confluent monolayer, and then simultaneously cultured with murine thymocytes at 1:5 or 1:10 (TEC:thymocytes) proportion for additional 5 hrs. After this incubation the thymocytes were discarded and epithelial cells were dissociated and analyzed by flow cytometry. The normalized dye coupling degree (gray columns) and the calcein mean fluorescence (white columns) of the double positive cells, clearly show the presence of thymocytes did not significantly modify the levels of dye coupling and dye transfer efficiency among mouse TEC. Data are expressed as mean SD, being derived from obtained from three independent experiments.