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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Med. 2014 Feb 16;20(3):255–264. doi: 10.1038/nm.3464

Figure 1. Aged MuSCs have diminished regenerative and self-renewal functions revealing an inherent stem cell defect.

Figure 1

(a) MuSC intramuscular transplantation scheme. (b–e) Bioluminescence imaging (BLI) and immunohistology of 10-cell primary transplants from young (Yng) or aged GFP/Luciferase MuSC donors. (b) BLI signals from n = 34 recipients from three experiments. p, photons. Engraftment threshold (dashed line) corresponding to histological detection of ≥1 donor-derived (GFP+) myofibers in (b) and (i). Representative BLI (c) and immunohistological (d) images. Scale bar, 500 µm. (e) GFP+ myofibers per recipient tibialis anterior muscle (n = 6–7 recipients from three experiments) in engrafted samples. (f) Limiting dilution analysis relating primary MuSCs transplanted with percent engraftment from n = 5–34 transplants per condition. (g, h) Flow cytometric analysis of GFP+ fraction of all CD34+α7-integrin+ MuSCs in primary recipients (n = 3, mean ± s.e.m.) transplanted with 100 primary (1°) young or aged MuSCs. (i, j) BLI analysis of secondary recipients transplanted with re-isolated GFP+CD34+α7-integrin+ cells from 700 primary young or aged MuSC recipients. (i) BLI scatter plot (mean overlaid, n = 3). (j) Representative BLI images. P < 0.05 (*) or P < 0.01 (**) by Fisher’s exact test in (b), Mann-Whitney test in (e), unpaired t test in (h), and paired t test in (i).