Fig 1.

A population of non‐haematopoietic cells express much higher levels of CXCL12, SCF, FOXC1 and EBF3 that other cells in human adult bone marrow. (A–C) Expression of the CXCL12 (A, C), KITLG (B), FOXC1 (B) and EBF3 (B) mRNAs in human adult bone marrow cells as determined by flow cytometry using the PrimeFlow RNA Assay kit. A population of non‐haematopoietic cells expressed markedly high levels of the CXCL12 mRNA, and these CXCL12^hi cells expressed high levels of LEPR (A, upper). LEPR⁺ non‐haematopoietic cells expressed markedly high levels of the CXCL12 mRNA (A, lower). CXCL12^hi cells uniformly expressed the KITLG, FOXC1 and EBF3 mRNAs (B). The CXCL12 mRNA was absent or present at very low levels in CD56⁺ osteoblastic cells and bone marrow CD31⁺CD34⁺ ECs (c). The blue histograms represent the target‐specific probes or antibodies, and the gray histograms represent background fluorescence (A–C). (D) Relative expression levels of the CXCL12, KITLG, FOXC1 and EBF3 mRNAs in CXCL12^hi/LEPR⁺ cells (n = 42), osteoblastic cells (n = 14) and endothelial cells (ECs) (n = 3) isolated from human adult bone marrow, as well as human adult synovial mesenchymal cells (n = 8), as determined by quantitative real‐time (qRT)‐polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Data represent mean ± SD (D). Two‐tailed Student’s t tests were used to assess statistical significance (D; **P < 0·01).