Fig. 1. Overexpressed supervillin decreases the rate of cell spreading. (A) Quantification of spreading and spread cells. As compared with the diameter of rounded cells (a), `spreading cells' (b) are smaller than twice the diameter of the average rounded COS7 cell, which is 23.0±0.7 µm (means±s.e.m., n=17), and `spread cells' (c) are larger than twice the diameter of rounded cells. Bar, 46 µm. (B) Percentage of spread COS7 cells after plating onto 10 µg/ml fibronectin for 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes. Results for control nontransfected cells or cells expressing EGFP alone or EGFP-SV were obtained. Means±s.e.m. of 100 cells counted per experiment, n=6. Sample images are shown in supplementary material Fig. S1. (C) Histogram of the percentages of spread COS7 cells at 30 minutes after plating on 10 µg/ml fibronectin. Means±s.e.m.; n=6; ^***P<0.001 for EGFP-SV versus both control and EGFP-expressing cells.