Fig. 6

TSCs differentiate into alveolar epithelial cells in the lung injured by BLM. The lungs were harvested at day 7 after BLM exposure. a–f Representative images of the lung receiving TSC pre-labeled with PKH67 (green, a and d), and immunofluorescence staining for AQP5 and SPC (red, b and e), and merged images with nuclear staining for DAPI (blue, c and f). White arrowheads point to green⁺AQP5⁺ and green⁺SPC⁺ cells (a–c and d–f, respectively). White arrows point to green⁺AQP5^–and green⁺SPC^– cells (a–c and d–f, respectively). Scale bar represents 25 µm. g Representative scatter plots of flow cytometry showing the gating strategy, FITC⁺ control from TSCs stained with PKH67 (first panel), FITC⁺ TSCs gated from unstained cells of the lung that received PKH67-pre-labeled TSCs (second panel), APC⁺ gated from the population of FITC⁺ cells in the second panel (third panel), and isotype control from the normal lung stained with FITC- and APC-isotypes (fourth panel). h Representative scatter plots of flow cytometry showing that the cells from BLM injured lungs receiving pre-labeled TSCs (FITC) were stained for AQP5 or SPC (APC). The percentage of FITC⁺ cells in the total lung cell population is shown in the gates (G+, the first and third panels), in which these cells gated for a percentage of FITC⁺AQP5⁺ and FITC⁺SPC⁺ in total FITC⁺ cells (second and fourth panels, respectively). i The pie graph shows quantitation of FITC⁺AQP5⁺ and FITC⁺SPC⁺ in the total FITC⁺ cells. n = 5 for each group