Fig. 1

Gating strategy of depleted bone marrow samples for the detection of mesenchymal stem cells. a Flow cytometry-based characterisation of viable CD45^– cells were discriminated from CD45⁺ leukocytes in the depleted bone marrow (left histogram). The middle histogram is defined as a region to exclude the 7-aminoactinomycin D (7AAD)⁺ dead/apoptotic cells from 7AAD^– viable cells. The 7AAD⁺ cells are not further presented in the right dot plot, which displays an overview of all scatter event properties and shows differentiations (see CHECK CD45 ^neg) to non-specifically stained debris by low side (SS) and forward scatter (FS) signals. b In order to detect putative progenitor cells among viable CD45^– cells, singularized cells were stained with CD73, CD105, CD166, and CD90 (positive discrimination markers) and CD3, CD14, and CD34 (negative discrimination markers)