Evaluation of skeletal muscle differentiation for the different samples at D3.

<p>(a) Relative gene expression levels for ten genes important for skeletal muscle differentiation, compared between the different experimental groups (F, F+BNNT+US, μG and μG+BNNT+US). mRNA analyses were run in quadruplicate; low magnification (b, scale bar = 100 μm) and high-magnification (c, scale bar = 25 μm) confocal fluorescence images of randomly oriented or aligned myotubes on the different samples. F-actin is stained in green, nuclei are stained in blue; (d) fusion index for C2C12 cells cultured on the different sample types, determined by dividing the total number of nuclei in myotubes (>2 nuclei) by the total number of nuclei counted in the image. Five low-magnification images were elaborated for each sample type and at least 25 myotubes were analyzed for each image. * = p<0.05, ** = p<0.01.