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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jan 30.
Published in final edited form as: Tissue Eng Part A. 2008 May;14(5):639–648. doi: 10.1089/tea.2007.0136

Figure 2.

Figure 2

(A and B) Cartilage-specific gene expression in CNC cultures stimulated with different growth factors for 42 days analyzed by quantitative RT-PCR. (A) Collagen type II; (B) aggrecan. TGF-β1 and IGF-I/TGF-β1 treated cultures showed a significantly higher level of both collagen type II and aggrecan mRNA expression compared to IGF-I and control cultures. mRNA values of each gene were normalized to those of the housekeeping gene, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). (C, D, and E) Collagen and sGAG synthesis in CNC cultures stimulated with different growth factors for 42 days analyzed by [3H]-proline incorporation, [35S]-sulfate incorporation, and 1, 9-dimethylmethylene blue (DMMB) assay. (C) [3H]-Proline incorporation. IGF-I/TGF-β1 treated cultures exhibited the highest rate of proline incorporation, i.e., collagen production. (D) [35S]-Sulfate incorporation. IGF-I/TGF-β1 treated cultures had highest rate of sGAG production. (E) sGAG content. Both TGF-β1 and IGF-I/TGF-β1 treated cultures showed the highest sGAG content. All data were normalized to DNA content. All values were mean ± SD. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, compared to control without growth factor supplementation, n = 3 in A and B, n = 4 in C, D, and E.