Identification of human first-trimester DSCs.

<p>(A) Purity assessment of DSCs by immunocytochemistry. Positive staining is indicated in brown color. (A.a) and (A.b), respectively represent passage-3 DSCs stained with anti-vimentin and anti-cytokeratin antibodies (×100), (A.c) is the isotypic control (×100). (A.d) Freshly isolated DSCs without any treatment (×100). This is a representative photograph from 5 identically conducted experiments. (B) Examination of TLR4 expressed on DSCs. After 48 hours of culture in complete RPMI medium, DSCs were harvested as described in <i><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0041869#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a></i>, stained with an APC-conjugated anti-TLR4 mAb or an isotypic mAb and analyzed by flow cytometry. The data in the figure represent the percentage of DSCs expressing TLR4.The figure is a representative plot based on five independent experiments, each of which was repeated three times. The mean±SD was used to represent the percentage of the population. (C) Detection of TLR4 transcription in DSCs. The DSCs were dissociated, and the otal RNA was extracted for RT-PCR. This is a representative experiment from 5 independent experiments using separate samples.