Figure 1.

Isolation of TMSC as SP cells. (A) SP cells were isolated by FACS from passage 3 human TM cells (using DyeCycle Violet Dye; Invitrogen). Cells showing reduction of both blue and red fluorescence (SP cells) were collected as defined by the box outlined on the left (arrow). (B) The sorted SP and non-SP cells were passaged and assessed for differential gene expression by qRT-PCR. Error bars show SD of triplicate analyses. *P < 0.05 (n = 3, Student's t-test). (C) RNAs extracted from dissected TM tissue and the adjacent corneal stroma tissue were compared on the expression of TM markers AnkG, CHI3L1; stromal marker KERA; and the common marker for both TM and stroma AQP1 to assess if the dissected TM tissue contains corneal tissue.