Increased cytotoxicity, and altered cell and nuclear morphology in MPTQ treated neuro 2a neuroblastoma cells.

A) Live-Dead assay on neuro 2a neuroblastoma cells was performed after 24 hours of 2.5, 5, 10, 20 or 30 µM of MPTQ treatment. Cells treated with equal amount of DMSO and for same duration served as controls. Fluorescent images from four random fields were captured and were displayed with equal pixel intensity. B) Percentage of dead cells was calculated using multi-cell scoring module of MetaMorph software. Data are expressed as mean±standard deviation of three independent experiments. p value displayed for each treatment was calculated by comparing with control using Student’s t-test. p value ≤0.05 is considered significant. C) Comparative morphology of normal and MPTQ treated neuro 2a cells. Bright field images of normal and 30 µM of MPTQ treated neuro 2a cells demonstrate plasma membrane blebbing (yellow arrow), irregular nuclear compartments (red arrow) only in MPTQ treated cells but not in normal cells after 48 hrs of treatment. D) DAPI stained images exhibit condensed and fragmented nuclei (yellow arrow) only in MPTQ treated but not in normal cells, features typical to apoptotic cells.