Figure 1.

Effects of heat and radiofrequency plasma glow discharge (RFGD) pretreatments on (A) Runx2 and (B) osterix mRNA expression in MC3T3 osteoprogenitor cells cultured on Ti6Al4V disks. Both untreated and pretreated disks were either uncoated (control) or precoated (fibronectin, FN) with 1 nM FN overnight and plated with MC3T3 cells. The levels of Runx2 and osterix mRNA expression measured by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction for treated disks at the indicated points in time are presented as a percentage of the corresponding levels of mRNA expression measured for untreated disks. The data represent means±standard error for 3 to 7 independent cultures at each point in time. ^a)Significantly greater (P<0.05) than untreated disks. ^b)Significantly greater (P<0.01) than untreated disks. ^c)Significantly greater (P<0.05) than heat-pretreated disks based on analysis of variance.