Fig. 5

Mechanical stretching upregulates glycolysis in MscL-G22S-expressing SCs. Under the mechanical stretching, the levels of glycolysis in MscL-G22S-expressing SCs were measured by detecting the glucose uptake, glycolytic products, and related enzymes. As shown, there were significantly higher levels of glucose uptake (A), glucose-6-phosphate (B), pyruvate (C), and lactate (D) in MscL-G22S-expressing SCs with mechanical stretching than the controls. Both the real-time PCR (E) and western blot (F-G) analysis showed significantly higher levels of GLUT1, GLUT4, HK2, PFKFB3, PKM2, and LDHA in MscL-G22S-activated SCs than the controls. H Immunofluorescence staining showed the upregulated glycolysis-related proteins in MscL-G22S-activated SCs. The quantitative data of immunofluorescence is shown in Fig. S8. I A schematic diagram highlights the effects of MscL-G22S activation on the up-regulation (red arrows) of key proteins and glycolytic products in SCs. Scale bars: 20 μm. The data shown were representative of at least three independent experiments. NC, negative control; MscL, MscL-G22S-expressing SCs; NC-stretch, negative control with mechanical stretching; MscL-stretch, MscL-G22S-expressing SCs with mechanical stretching. ns, not significant, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001