Fig. 8

Moesin’s phosphorylation state affects cellular contractility. A and B Phase-contrast (left) and fluorescent imaging (right, green in merge) of S2R + cells following Fog perfusion treated with Moesin 3’UTR RNAi and expressing EGFP tagged (A) Moesin T559E or (B) Moesin T559A. Scale bar 10 µm. C and D Quantification of the fraction (± SEM) of (C) Contracted and (D) Rounded cells following RNAi treatment with control (yellow circles) and Moesin 3’UTR (mint green circles) RNAi. We also expressed EGFP-tagged Moesin T559A (plum circles) and Moesin T559E (brown circles) following Moesin 3’UTR RNAi. C The hypercontractile phenotype following Moesin 3’UTR RNAi could not be rescued by the expression of EGFP-Moesin T559A, while expression of EGFP-Moesin T559E led to a statistically significant decrease in the number of contracted cells (***p-value = 0.000174, ****p-value < 0.0001, one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc analysis, N = 3). D Conversely, the number of rounded cells following rescue with EGFP-Moesin T559A was no different than Moesin 3’UTR RNAi alone, but expression EGFP-Moesin T559E led to a significant increase in the number of rounded cells (*p-value = 0.0254,****p-value < 0.0001, one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc analysis, N = 3)