Morphological changes of BMSCs after co-culturing with RGCs when TSP-1 was silenced with siRNA and rescued by infection with a recombinant adenovirus expressing TPS1.

<p>48 hours after the first siRNA transfection, BMSCs and RGCs were co-cultured in a transwell system. A, Neural-like morphological changes (10×) in BMSCs was increased at 3 and 5 days in controls (1). This effect was diminished when TSP-1 was silenced with siRNA (2), but restored in BMSCs infected with a TSP-1-expressing adenovirus (3). B, Bar graph shows the mean and SE of the percentage of neural-like cells in the control, silenced, and rescued BMSCs (p = 0.011, p = 0.022, p = 0.028, respectively). *p-values≤0.05. (10 pictures were taken randomly under a regular microscope from culturing cells at different time points. The average relative percent of neural-like BMSCs come from at least three separate experiments).