Fig. 1

Characteristics of frontal bone mesenchymal stem cells (FbMSCs). a Schematic of murine skull. Areas marked F refer to frontal bone, from where FbMSCs were isolated. b Representative morphological features of FbMSCs. Scale bar, 200 μm. c ALP staining of FbMSCs. Scale bar, 50 μm. d Flow cytometric analysis of FbMSCs. e Expression of iNOS, IL-10, IL6, and HGF in FbMSCs stimulated with the indicated factors. Microarray analysis was performed on FbMSCs and bone marrow MSCs (BMSCs). f Cluster heat map of representative differential genes in FbMSCs and BMSCs. GO (g) and KEGG (h) analysis of enriched pathway in FbMSCs. Quantitative RT-PCR verified the higher expression of Tfap2β, Fgf1, and Grm1 (i), as well as genes related to the neuron ligand-receptor pathway (j), axon guidance pathway and MAPK pathway (k) in FbMSCs. (Data are presented as the mean ± standard error; *, **, ***, and **** indicate significance at p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001, and p < 0.0001, respectively).