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Fig. 2 | Stem Cell Research & Therapy

Fig. 2

From: Adult muscle-derived stem cells engraft and differentiate into insulin-expressing cells in pancreatic islets of diabetic mice

Fig. 2

Long-term cultured MDSC spontaneously form cell clusters that stain positively for dithizone and express insulin. a Representative examples of small and large islet-like clusters spontaneously differentiated from 3-week cultured MDSC showing phase-contrast images of the living clusters. Scale bar = 50 μm. b Cell clusters staining positively for zinc using the reactive thiol reagent dithizone (DTZ), commonly used to identify insulin-expressing pancreatic beta cells. Shown are two different examples of DTZ-positive clusters from different preparations of MDSC. The arrow shows neuronal-like adherent cells associated with clusters but not stained with DTZ. Scale bars = 20 μm. c eGFP expression in live cell clusters derived from MIP-eGFP mice (left panels) and clusters immunostained for insulin (red in right panels). Scale bars = 20 μm. d Beta islet-like cluster differentiated from RIP-mCherry MDSC after 4 weeks. The top three panels show phase-contrast and live fluorescence of the cluster before fixation. The three bottom panels show mCherry (red) fluorescence with Hoechst staining for DNA and immunofluorescence staining for insulin (green) of the same islet-like cluster shown live in the three top panels

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