Fig. 9.

Expression of the genes of interest in human nuclei pulposi. A Normalized chip signals plotted as gene expression measures from microarray data (E-MTAB-6868; [88]) obtained from notochordal cells from human embryonic (7.5–8.5 weeks post-conception, n = 3) and fetal (12–14 weeks post-conception, n = 2) stages. B Log2 normalized read counts plotted as gene expression measures from the RNA-seq data of NP samples from lumbar disc herniation (DH, n = 5), and lumbar disc spondylolisthesis (DS, n = 5) obtained from the GEO database (GSE146904; [89]). Expression of PHIP (C), RGMB (D), TMOD1 (E), RGS6 (F), and CORO7 (G) relative to GAPDH, measured by qPCR analysis in the NP tissue collected from less degenerated (Grade 1–3) or moderately to severely degenerated (Grade 4–5) lumbar disc from human male and female of various age groups (see Methods). Results are presented as scatter dot plots with mean and standard deviation for each cohort. The qPCR results plotted in (C-G) were analyzed by unpaired t -test. * = p < 0.05. p, post-conception