Morphology and gene expression of hESC on different maturation stages.

<p>Brightfield micrographs of cell cultures showing the representative morphology of <b>A</b>) undifferentiated hESC (Regea08/017), <b>B</b>) fusiform hESC-RPE, <b>C</b>) epithelioid hESC-RPE, <b>D</b>) cobblestone hESC-RPE. Scale bars, 100 µm, <b>E</b>) Gene expression of <b>1</b>: D407, <b>3</b>: ARPE-19, <b>5</b>: undifferentiated hESC, <b>7</b>: fusiform hESC-RPE, <b>9</b>: epithelioid hESC-RPE, <b>11</b>: cobblestone hESC-RPE, <b>13</b>: hFF. –RT- negative controls (i.e., samples not treated with reverse transcriptase) are placed adjacent to each sample in the same order: <b>2</b>: D407, <b>4</b>: ARPE-19, <b>6</b>: undifferentiated hESC, <b>8</b>: fusiform hESC-RPE, <b>10</b>: epithelioid hESC-RPE, <b>12</b>: cobblestone hESC-RPE, <b>14</b>: hFF. <b>F</b>) Culture periods of the studied samples in all analyses. Cells were selected based on their morphology rather than the culture period.