Morphology and expression of cardiac markers before and after differentiation of ADSCs into cardiomyocytes.

<p>(A) Morphological change of ADSCs into cardiomyocytes in the absence (left panels) or presence (right panels) of ROCK-specific inhibitor Y-27632. After 6 days of culture, spindle shaped cells (black arrow), small round cells (gray arrow) and small tube cells (white arrow) appeared in the top panel, with no beating. After 12 days, single contractive cells (white arrow) were shown in the center panel; After 18dyas, myotube-like structure formed a cohesive network in the bottom panels and they began to contract synchronously. Scale bars = 100 µm. (B) Expression of cardiac genes was determined by RT-PCR before (lane 1 for undifferentiated ADSCs) and after (lane 2 for beating cells) differentiation of ADSCs into cardiomyocytes. Rat heart tissue was used as a positive control (lane 4), with no cDNA as a negative control (lane 3). Expression of α-cardiac actin, α-MHC, β-MHC, ANP, cTnT, GATA4 and MEF-2C mRNA was higher in ADSCs-derived beating cells than in undifferentiated ADSCs.