Fig. 1

Osteogenic/odontogenic differentiation potential of hDPSCs. hDPSCs were induced to differentiate in osteoblast as detailed in Materials and Methods. Differentiating cells were stained or harvested at various time points (7, 14, 21 days) and undifferentiated cells (0 day) were taken as control. A Representative images of ALP staining during differentiation. The pictures on the left show photographs of ALP staining cells at the indicated time-points with relative enlarged microscopic inspection (at the bottom). The graph on the right displays densitometry analysis (Image J software) of ALP staining along with statistical evaluation; bars are means ± SEM of 4 biological replicates under each condition **P < 0.01 versus undifferentiated cells. B q-RT-PCR analysis of osteogenic specific gene markers Ocn and Dspp during OB differentiation of hDPSCs, normalized to their expression in undifferentiated cells; means ± SEM of 4–5 independent measurements (biological replicates) each carried out in 3 technical replicates; **P < 0.01 with respect to 0 day. C q-RT-PCR analysis of pluripotency gene markers Myc, Nanog, Klf4 during OB-induction of hDPSCs; the bars are averages of three independent time-course experiments for Nanog; *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.005 versus undifferentiated. For Myc and Klf4 the bars are averages of two independent measurements yielding comparable results. D Representative immunoblot of Runx2 at the indicated time-points. Full-length blots are presented in Additional file 1: Fig. S1. E Representative photographs of cells stained for extracellular calcification with Alizarin red at the indicated time-points