Figure 6.

RARα is required for the differentiation of NG2⁺ cells into oligodendrocytes. A, Immunostaining of NG2⁺ cell cultures transfected with scrambled or RARα siRNA showing that transfection with RARα siRNA resulted in the loss of RARα. B, Quantification of RARα expression normalized for cell number (a.u.). Data are shown as mean ± SEM, **p ≤ 0.01, Student's t test. C, Quantitative analysis of RNA levels normalized to GAPDH by qRT-PCR confirm the suppression of RARα over 72 h. Data are shown as mean ± SEM obtained from five fields per culture condition from three independent experiments, *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001, Student's t test. D, Expression of RARα and OSP in scrambled and RARα siRNA-transfected NG2⁺ cells in the presence of vehicle, BAPTA-AM, or BAPTA + retinal. Only scrambled siRNA-transfected NG2⁺ cells treated with BAPTA-AM + retinal differentiate into oligodendrocytes. E, Quantification of OSP⁺ normalized for number of cells in the cultures taken from five fields per culture condition from three independent experiments, Data are shown as mean ± SEM, ***p ≤ 0.001. n.s., Not significant, Student's t test. Scale bars, 50 μm.