Fig 2: Vessel cell from cottonwood with extracted pigments of S. cuboideum between the helical thickenings, pointed to with arrows. Picture taken with a Nikon Eclipse Ni-U at a magnification of 20×.

Fig 3: (A) Vessels of cottonwood with extracted pigment of S. ganodermophthorum accumulating on the cell walls; (B) Pigments of S. ganodermophthorum between the helical thickenings, pointed to with arrows. Picture taken with a Nikon Eclipse Ni-U at 20× magnification.

Fig 4: (A) Vessel cell wall of cottonwood covered with extracted pigment, pointed to with arrows, from C. aeruginosa taken at a 20× magnification; (B) Detail of the vessel cell wall showing concentration of the pigment in the vessel pits at a 40× magnification. Picture taken with a Nikon Eclipse Ni-U.

Fig 5: Representative images of immunohistochemically stained testicular tissue. (a,b) Stained against vitamin D receptor protein with Hematoxylin-counterstaining (Control group). (c,d) Stained against MAGE-A4, a specific spermatogonium marker protein (Vitamin D deficient group). The images were taken with a Nikon Eclipse Ni-U microscope coupled with a Nikon DS-Ri2 camera using NIS Elements BR and Image J 1.50b image analysis software. The brown color shows DAB chromogen-positivity which indicates receptor-positivity, and the blue/violet color represents hematoxylin counterstaining. (b,d) Single tubules from (a,c) panels without background, the previously round-selected tubules have been cleared of background with the ‘Image/Clear outside’ tool from the Image J program. 10× objective, scale bars: 200 µm.