Fig. 4

Use of Sca-1 as a selection marker for MSCs. a Sca-1⁺ and sca-1⁻ from cBM were cultured in osteogenic (upper), adipogenic (middle) and chondrogenic (lower) differentiation media followed by Alizarin Red S (upper), Oil Red O (middle) or Safranin O (lower) staining. Osteogenic and adipogenic images, bar = 100 μm; chondrogenic images, bar = 200 μm. b Chondrogenic pellet cultures from the indicated subpopulations assayed for S-GAG content. c Fold change of Sca-1⁺ relative to Sca-1⁻ expression of stem and lineage-specific gene transcripts in freshly isolated and cultured (passage 2 (p2)) cells. Fold change of relative expression of transcripts associated with chondrogenesis in d freshly isolated Sca-1⁻ versus Sca-1⁺ sorted cells and e cultured articular chondrocytes versus cultured Sca-1⁻ cells. Data are the mean ± SD of at least three independent experiments. **p <0.01, Student’s t test. s-GAG sulfated glycosaminoglycans