Fig. 2. Cells adapt to hypertonic medium after long-term incubation. Cultures of MCF7 and HeLa cells adapted within 4 days to 160 mM sucrose in the medium and were cultivated for a further 3 weeks at this load. Compared with compaction at 20 minutes (right; for MCF7 see Fig. 1), chromatin no longer appeared compacted in cells grown long-term in high sucrose medium. Bar, 10 µm.