Fig. 1

Characterization of murine MSCs and TLR expression. (a) Morphology and characteristics of murine BM-MSCs (20× magnification). (b) Immunophenotypic profile from a representative murine MSC population. Cell surface markers, solid red; isotype cell controls, gray. (c) MSCs were confirmed to have the capacity to differentiate into chondrocytes, osteoblasts, and adipocytes (right) by alizarin red, safranin O, and oil red staining (4, 10, and 40× magnification, respectively), as described in Methods. Respective controls (culture medium only, without differentiation conditions) (Left). (d) Relative expression of TLR3 and TLR4 in MSCs confirmed by RT-qPCR normalized with 18S = 1 × 10^–5 as described previously [37] (n = 3). (e) RT-qPCR products were analyzed by 2.5 % agarose gel electrophoresis along with a low-range DNA ladder (MW). Negative control, without cDNA template. MW molecular weight. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001