Figure 4. Effects on bone and cartilage gene expression in heart valve and chondrocyte cultures following Sox9 manipulation.

Mitral valve explants (A) and chondrocyte cultures from post natal Sox9^fl/fl mice (B) were infected for 4 hours with 2.5×10¹⁰ PFU/10 cm² adenovirus targeting GFP (AdV-GFP), Cre (Adv-Cre) (grey bars), or full length murine Sox9 (AdV-Sox9) (black bars) to target knockdown or overexpression respectively. After 72 hours of initial infection, RNA was isolated and qPCR performed to examine changes in expression of Sox9, Spp1 and cartilage genes CLP and Col2a1 compared to AdV-GFP controls. Note logarithmic scale. *Student's t−test<0.05 compared to AdV-GFP. (B inset) Western blot analysis to show Sox9 expression levels in AdV-Cre, AdV-GFP and AdV-Sox9 treated chondrocytes. α-tubulin expression is included as a loading control.