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. 2015 Aug 20;10(8):e0135830. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0135830

Fig 2. Prenatal retinal neurospheres lose VSX2 expression over time in culture.

Fig 2

KI67+ hRPCs in the outer neuroblastic layer of 96 day human prenatal retina co-express the neural stem cell markers (A) NESTIN and (B) SOX2. Short term prenatal retinal neurosphere cultures also contain abundant (C) KI67+/NESTIN+ and (D) KI67+/SOX2+ hRPCs. Nearly all VSX2+ hRPCs in short term prenatal retinal neurosphere cultures co-label with (E) NESTIN and (F) SOX2. Prenatal retinal neurosphere cultures (n = 5) from 79–108 day gestation tissue were sampled at 1 week, 1 month, and 2 months. After 2 months, very little VSX2 immunostaining is detected, although (G) NESTIN and (H) SOX2 remain highly expressed. The percentage of VSX2, KI67, NESTIN, and SOX2 immunopositive cells were quantified (I) in short term cultures and (J) over a 2 month period. Nuclei were visualized with DAPI and cell count data is expressed as % immunopositive cells. Scale bars: 50 μm (panels A,B); 20 μm (panels C-H).