Fig. 4

Chondrogenesis of fTDC and tTDC. a Toluidine blue staining of day 20 chondrogenic pellets. Stain uptake and metachromatic hue reflective of sGAG content are higher in fTDC pellets (Figure panels include three independent experiments). Scale bar = 100 microns. b sGAG contents of day 20 fTDC and tTDC pellets normalized to DNA content. c Relative chondrogenic gene expression. Box-whisker plots represent medians and inter-quartile ranges (SOX-9 and ACAN), and bars represent mean ± SD (COL2A1, ALP, COL10A1). * represents significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) from respective terminally differentiated cells (unshaded bars). ✢ represents significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) between day 21 fTDC and tTDC. n = 5