Figure 1

Assessment of pluripotent marker expression and characterization of young and old BM-MSCs: (A) Passage 3 BM-MSCs from young and old rats were harvested and labeled with a PE-coupled antibody against CD45 and CD31, and FITC-coupled antibodies against CD105, CD90 and CD73 or immunoglobin isotype control IgGs and analyzed with FACS. Histograms show counts for specific antibody staining profiles (blue). (B) Immunocytochemical analysis demonstrates that old BM-MSCs express the pluripotent maker Oct-4 but fail to express Sox-2 and NANOG. (C) qPCR analysis for the relative expression of Oct-4, Sox-2 and NANOG in young and old BM-MSCs. We failed to detect Sox-2 and NANOG in old BM-MSCs. Columns show the combined mean ΔΔC_q values of young (n = 4) and old rats (n = 4) for each marker. Data represent relative expression of transcripts normalized relative to GAPDH and expressed as the Mean ± SEM for three biologically independent experiments (n = 3). The '‡' sign indicates a significant difference between the indicated group and any passage 3 groups from younger donors (p < 0.05). (n.d ~ not detectable)